Surplusage Quotes & Sayings

One great aim of revision is to cut out. In the exuberance of composition it is natural to throw in - as one does in speaking - a number of small words that add nothing to meaning but keep up the flow and rhythm of thought. In writing, not only does this surplusage not add to meaning, it subtracts from it. Read and revise, reread and revise, keeping reading and revising until your text seems adequate to your thought. — Jacques Barzun

And you did all of this before I awakened?'
'Not all of us can afford to be layabouts ... You upper class types are all the same. Sleep until noon and then fritter your nights away.'
She narrowed her eyes. 'I do not fritter my nights away.'
'Really? And what do you do at night?'
'I go to social events. Parties or galas. Sometimes a musicale. Or a charity event,' she tacked on with satisfaction.
'Well, I must retract my frittering comment in that case.'
'It's not frittering. It's surviving. — Anne Mallory

The philosopher, who with calm suspicion examines the dreams and omens, the miracles and prodigies, of profane or even of ecclesiastical history, will probably conclude that, if the eyes of the spectators have sometimes been deceived by fraud, the understanding of the readers has much more frequently been insulted by fiction. — Edward Gibbon

I work in film, TV, commercials and do live PR stunts for companies. A lot of my time is spent reading scripts and looking at designing sequences, speaking to directors and producers about how they want the sequences to look, how they will work and budgeting those stunts. — Steve Truglia

Tolerance, inter-cultural dialogue and respect for diversity are more essential than ever in a world where peoples are becoming more and more closely interconnected. — Kofi Annan

Repeat the good. And the bad. Do it all ... and pile on the years. — Natsuki Takaya

To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Before transformation, sin is any kind of moral mistake; afterward, sin is a mistake about who you are and whose you are. — Richard Rohr

To design something really new and innovative you have to reject reason. — Jonathan Ive

He is in a constant state of stage fright, he says, because he never knows what part of his life he is going to have to act in next — Kurt Vonnegut

Eschew surplusage. — Mark Twain

Gene Simmons after three months in the Gobi Desert? The Hunchback of Notre Dame following corrective surgery? An escaped Muppet? The drummer from Ratt? — Greg Sestero

The tourists always seem to want something. On Thisby, it's less about wanting, and more about being. I wonder after I say it if he'll think I sound like have no drive or ambition. — Maggie Stiefvater

Going after ISIS, it's beautiful, I like it. — Ted Koppel

I'm a walking, talking enigma. — Larry David

He told her that every one of her enemies, all the masters and overseers of her suffering, would be punished, if not in this world then the next, for justice may be slow and invisible, but it always renders its true verdict in the end. — Colson Whitehead

No matter who I couldn't save before, no matter if I'm stuck being a random mess of a girl, I'm still going to save something. — Sarah Porter

Both were men who knew the frontier code and each other. At a time of action speech, beyond the curtest of monosyllables, was surplusage. — William MacLeod Raine

All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can - and must - be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly - and no doubt will keep trying. — Robert A. Heinlein

All art does but consist in the removal of surplusage. — Walter Pater