Quotes & Sayings About Superlatives

When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Friendship is the bestiest thing that comes to life . Friends will always be there for you don't worry about the fakes worry about the people who had your back from the start and never treated you wrong always remember they are your real friends don't never take them as granted because one day your going to lose a good friend by the way your action's are when you see a good friend stick to that person . — Marilyn Monroe

People talk fundamentals and superlatives and then make some changes of detail. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives — Nancy Mitford

Women speak in the superlative. — Emile Souvestre

I don't know why we have to put things in boxes of superlatives. That isolates them. Life is fluid, and the minute you start trying to put a line around something, it will deceive you and go away. — Alan Arkin

Americans specially love superlatives. The phrases 'biggest in the world,' 'finest in the world,' are on all lips. Unless President Hayes is a strong man, they will soon come to boast that their government is composed of the 'biggest scoundrels' in the world. — Isabella Bird

Put in the superlatives yourselves, I'm running out. Money doesn't thrill me or make me play better because there are benefits to being wealthy. — Hristo Stoichkov

And when you listened to one of his stories, you'd find yourself performing rapid calculations in your head, subtracting superlatives, figuring the square root of an absolute and then multiplying by maybe. Still, — Tim O'Brien

41 Never exaggerate. It isn't wise to use superlatives. They offend the truth and cast doubt on your judgment. By exaggerating, you squander your praise and reveal a lack of knowledge and taste. Praise awakens curiosity, which begets desire, and later, when the goods seem overpriced, as often happens, expectation feels cheated and avenges itself by running down the praised and the praiser. The prudent show restraint, and would rather fall short than long. True eminences are rare, so temper your esteem. To overvalue something is a form of lying. It can ruin your reputation for good taste, and - even worse - for wisdom. — Baltasar Gracian

But why talk in superlatives, as if something that is beautiful could be surpassed? — Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

The Victorian era was an age of superlatives and larger-than-life characters, and as far as that goes, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse fit right in: what Victoria was to monarchs, Dickens to novelists, Burton to explorers, Robert E. Lee to generals, Dr. Wildman Whitehouse was to assholes. The only 19th-century figure who even comes close to him in this department is Custer. — Neal Stephenson

Cosmopolitanism gives us one country, and it is good; nationalism gives us a hundred countries, and every one of them is the best. Cosmopolitanism offers a positive, patriotism a chorus of superlatives. Patriotism begins the praise of the world at the nearest thing, instead of beginning it at the most distant, and thus it insures what is, perhaps, the most essential of all earthly considerations, that nothing upon earth shall go without its due appreciation. Wherever there is a strangely-shaped mountain upon some lonely island, wherever there is a nameless kind of fruit growing in some obscure forest, patriotism insures that this shall not go into darkness without being remembered in a song. — G.K. Chesterton

God cannot be referred to as 'good,' 'better,' or 'best' because He is above all things. If a man says that God is wise, the man is lying because anything that is wise can become wiser. Anything that a man might say about God is incorrect ... The best a man can do is to remain silent ... The true master knows that if he had a God he could understand, he would never hold Him to be God. — Andrew Davidson

For Rat Kiley, I think, facts were formed by sensation, not the other way around, and when you listened to one of his stories, you'd find yourself performing rapid calculations in your head, subtracting superlatives, figuring the square root of an absolute and then multiplying by maybe. — Tim O'Brien

Klemperer's insight that Nazi speech dealt in superlatives. Hence, Hitler was the "smartest" leader of the "bravest" people of the "purest" blood, and Germany was the "greatest country" and "most glorious" of nations in the most "heroic" of wars and struggles against the "worst" of enemies in the "most dangerous" of times. — Dean G. Stroud

To me singing is a joy. Choral singing is a delight. Welsh Choral singing is more than a delight. The Treorchy Male Choir is the best in choral singing. How then can they be described except in superlatives? They are without equal. — Ronnie Barker

You can enjoy the quality of the ad and not let them pressure you to buy what you don't really need. I have had fun taking back superlatives and just ordinary good words and phrases from ads and trying to restore some of their life to them. — Corita Kent

There emanates from superlatives a destructive force. — Elias Canetti

I watched our friends' wary, intelligent faces droop at our tale. Their shock was a mere shadow of our own, resembling more the goodwilled imitation of that emotion, and for this reason it was a temptation to exaggerate, to throw a rope of superlatives across the abyss that divided experience from its representation by anecdote. — Ian McEwan

Never exaggerate. It is a matter of great importance to forego superlatives, in part to avoid offending the truth, and in part to avoid cheapening your judgment. Exaggeration wastes distinction and testifies to the paucity of your understanding and taste. Praise excites anticipation and stimulates desire. Afterwards when value does not measure up to price, disappointment turns against the fraud and takes revenge by cheapening both the appraised and the appraise. For this reason let the prudent go slowly, and err in understatement rather than overstatement. The extraordinary of every kind is always rare, wherefore temper your estimate. — Baltasar Gracian

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. — C.S. Lewis

Ronnie Moran, Joe Fagan, Bob Paisley, Roy Evans - they were hard on us young players. If you got a 'well done' off Ronnie Moran, you must have played well ... They never used superlatives at Liverpool. — Paul Jewell

Some so speak in exaggerations and superlatives that we need to make a large discount from their statements before we can come at their real meaning. — Tryon Edwards

To fully express their feelings, women assume poetic license and use various superlatives, metaphors, and generalizations. Men mistakenly take these expressions literally. Because they misunderstand the intended meaning, they commonly react in an unsupportive manner. — John Gray

Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers set chatting together, said to them, "Either I am much deceived,
or by your cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no very deep discourse." To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied: " 'Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of the verb Ballo be spelt with a
double L, or that hunt after the derivation of the comparatives Cheirou and Beltiou, and the superlatives Cheiriotou and Beliotou, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science; but as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad. — Michel De Montaigne

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague. — William Safire

[Chicago] is the greatest and most typically American of all cities. New York is bigger and more spectacular and can outmatch it in other superlatives, but it is a "world" city, more European in some respects than American. — John Gunther

The art of advertisement, after the American manner, has introduced into all our life such a lavish use of superlatives, that no standard of value whatever is intact. — Wyndham Lewis

Despite my resistance to hyperbole, the LHC belongs to a world that can only be described with superlatives. It is not merely large: the LHC is the biggest machine ever built. It is not merely cold: the 1.9 kelvin (1.9 degrees Celsius above absolute zero) temperature necessary for the LHC's supercomputing magnets to operate is the coldest extended region that we know of in the universe - even colder than outer space. The magnetic field is not merely big: the superconducting dipole magnets generating a magnetic field more than 100,000 times stronger than the Earth's are the strongest magnets in industrial production ever made.

And the extremes don't end there. The vacuum inside the proton-containing tubes, a 10 trillionth of an atmosphere, is the most complete vacuum over the largest region ever produced. The energy of the collisions are the highest ever generated on Earth, allowing us to study the interactions that occurred in the early universe the furthest back in time. — Lisa Randall

Allen Anderson speaks from the heart about subjects he loves; this enthralls audiences everywhere. His outlook is realistic but invariably positive, encouraging everyone to expect the best. Audience feedback is replete with superlatives. — Henry Koster

Don't go for good or better; the best is yours; go for it. — Israelmore Ayivor

At last, the newspapers discovered the Bears. I kept writing articles about upcoming games, and by reading the papers, I learned editors like superlatives. I blush when I think how many times I wrote that the next game was going to be the most difficult of the season or how a new player was the fastest man in the West. — George Halas