Vocabulary Words Quotes & Sayings

Use your dictionary to find the meaning of the new vocabulary words needed for this exercise before you begin. Write the words in your language in the space provided. Complete the following sentences using the correct form of the verb to be. 1. My aunt nice. 2. The clouds white. 3. Kathy sick. 4. The ribbons yellow. 5. We twins. 6. The windows open. — Julie Lachance

The words: never, can't, quit, and fail, are not in my vocabulary. — Robert Cheeke

I'm learning all the right vocabulary words - 'You're right, I'm wrong.' — George Stephanopoulos

I'm not too keen on talking. I always have the feeling that the words are getting away from me, escaping and scattering. It's not to do with vocabulary or meanings, because I know quite a lot of words, but when I come out with them they get confused and scattered. That's why I avoid stories and speeches and just stick to answering the questions I'm asked. All the extra words, the overflow, I keep to myself, the words that I silently multiply to get close to the truth. — Delphine De Vigan

You can't build a vocabulary without reading. You can't meet friends if you ... stay at home by yourself all the time. In the same way, you can't build up a vocabulary if you never meet any new words. And to meet them you must read. The more you read the better. — Rudolf Flesch

Words are a mirror of their times. By looking at the areas in which the vocabulary of a language is expanding fastest in a given period, we can form a fairly accurate impression of the chief preoccupations of society at that time and the points at which the boundaries of human endeavour are being advanced. — John Ayto

Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by. — A.S. Byatt

They ordered punch. They drank it. It was hot rum punch. The pen falters when it attempts to treat of the excellence thereof; the sober vocabulary, the sparse epithet of this narrative, are inadequate to the task; and pompous term, jewelled, exotic phrases rise to the excited fancy. It warmed the blood and cleared the head; it filled the soul with well-being; it disposed the mind at once to utter wit, and to appreciate the wit of others; it had the vagueness of music and the precision of mathematics. Only one of its qualities was comparable to anything else; it had the warmth of a good heart; but its taste, its smell, its feel, were not to be described in words. — W. Somerset Maugham

I find my vocabulary is quite a lot better when I'm hungover. I feel like I unlock a key of words that I don't usually use in day-to-day life. — Ella Eyre

Transcendental artists are messengers. Their symbolic vocabulary originates from the infinite wisdom of higher spheres, in a non-referential time/space continuum ... the way of the shaman. The presence of glyphs speaks a universal language of the soulthat transcends words. If one considers the notion of parallel realities and the plurality of dimensional realms, the premise of art as "consciousness-provoking vessel" can be viewed as an organic and natural occurrence. — ELLE NICOLAI

I do not think the gay population has been all that rabid for gay marriage. Note that I do not use the words 'gay community.' Expunge that expression from your vocabulary. We are not a community. — Larry Kramer

Short words are best, and old words when short are best of all. — Winston S. Churchill

The most unfortunate thing about being an atheist wasn't the loss of God and all the comfort and reassurance of God - no small things - but the loss of a vital human vocabulary. Grace, charity, transcendence: I felt them as surely as any believer, even if we differed on the ultimate cause, and yet I had no right words for them. — Joshua Ferris

Oh, I think so. Yeah. Oh, well, sure. A 'type-token' ratio, I suppose, would be as good a way as any to work that out, and with samples of a thousand words or more, you could just check the frequency of occurrence of the various parts of speech." "And would you call that conclusive?" "Pretty much. You see, that sort of test would discount any change in the basic vocabulary. It's not the words but the expression of the words; the style. We call it 'index of diversity.' Very baffling to the layman, which, of course, is what we want." The director smiled wryly. Then he nodded at the tape in Karras's hands. "And so this other person's voice is on that one?" "Not exactly." "Not exactly? — William Peter Blatty

Sound is the vocabulary of nature ... noises are as well articulated as the words in a dictionary ... Opposing the world of sound is the world of music. — Pierre Schaeffer

If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand ... But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word. — Jonathan Safran Foer

We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues. — Alberto Manguel

The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God's name would you want to make things words by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use? — Stephen King

We must admit that today conformity is on the Left. To be sure, the Right is not brilliant. But the Left is in complete decadence, a prisoner of words, caught in its own vocabulary, capable merely of stereotyped replies, constantly at a loss when faced with truth, from which it nevertheless claimed to derive its laws. The Left is schizophrenic and needs doctoring through pitiless self-criticism, exercise of the heart, close reasoning, and a little modesty. — Albert Camus

Of course there are big differences in length and character and vocabulary, but each level has its particular pleasures when it comes to the words one can use and the way one uses them. — Margaret Mahy

There were lots of words which had fallen out of my vocabulary, living abroad so long. — Henry Miller

Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a vast vocabulary. The problem in language is to express many ideas and thoughts with comparatively few words. — John Wesley Powell

The more words you know, the more clearly and powerfully you will think ... and the more ideas you will invite into your mind. — Wilfred Funk

Banish the words 'I can't' from your vocabulary. Remember: If 'can't' equals 'won't', 'can' equals 'will.' — Phyllis George

I want our students to be so accustomed to children of other cultures that the words 'diversity' and 'tolerance' won't be in their vocabulary. They won't need them - they'll live it. — Suzy Amis

The neurological feedback and resulting control of the muscles involved in speech is extremely complex. The mind is involved in a far greater task than simply remembering vocabulary and organizing words into meaningful sentences. — Lynn Lundquist

Archaism, in the linguistic order, is not, in any event, synonymous with simplicity of structure, very much to the contrary. Languages generally grow poorer with the passing oftime by gradually losing the richness of their vocabulary, the ease with which they can diversify various aspects of one and the same idea, and their power of synthesis, which is the ability to express many things with few words. In order to make up for this impoverishment, modern languages have become more complicated on the rhetorical level; while perhaps gaining in surface precision, they have not done as as regards content. Language historians are astonished by the fact that Arabic was able to retain a morphology attested to as early as the Code of Hammurabi, for the nineteenth to the eighteenth century before the Christian era, and to retain a phonetic system which preserves, with the exception of a single sound, the extremly rich sound-range disclosed by the most ancient Semitic alphabets discovered, [...] — Titus Burckhardt

When you are wanting to comfort someone in their grief take the words 'at least' out of your vocabulary. In saying them you minimise someone else's pain ... Don't take someone else's grief and try to put it in a box that YOU can manage. Learn to truly grieve with others for as long as it may take. — Kay Warren

The other thing that's happened with writing is that I'm not afraid it will go away. Up until a couple of years ago, I feared that sitting down with paper and pencil revealed too much desire and that for such ambition I would be punished. My vocabulary would contract anorexia, ideas would be born autistic, even titles would not come to flirt with me anymore. I suppose this was tied to that internal judge, the serpent who eats her own tail. She insinuates you're not good enough; you believe her and try less, ratifying her assessment; so you try even less; and on and on. This snake survives on your dying. Finally, now, the elided words of my wisest writing teacher, the poet David Wojahn, make sense. "Be ambitious," he said, "for the work." Not for the in-dwelling editor. That bitch was impossible to please anyway. — Marsha L. Larsen

'Give up ... it's time to quit,' I don't think I've ever really accepted those kinds of words in my life or vocabulary. — Willie Aames

I am glad that the country world ... retains a power to use our English tongue. It is a part of its sense of reality, of its vocabulary of definite terms, and of its habit of earthly common sense. I find this country writing an excellent corrective of the urban vocabulary of abstractions and of the emotion disguised as thinking which abstractions and humbug have loosed upon the world. May there always be such things as a door, a milk pail, and a loaf of bread, and words to do them honor. — Henry Beston

Intelligence isn't just about how many levels of math courses you've taken, how fast you can solve an algorithm, or how many vocabulary words you know that are over 6 characters. It's about being able to approach a new problem, recognize its important components, and solve it - then take that knowledge gained and put it towards solving the next, more complex problem. It's about innovation and imagination, and about being able to put that to use to make the world a better place. This is the kind of intelligence that is valuable, and this is the type of intelligence we should be striving for and encouraging. — Andrea Kuszewsk

The two most misused words in the entire English vocabulary are love and friendship. A true friend would die for you, so when you start trying to count them on one hand, you don't need any fingers. — Larry Flynt

This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak, meaning "to quack like a duck." Like various other words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided — George Orwell

Words have power. Use the language of leadership versus the vocabulary of a victim. — Robin Sharma

Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account. — John Dewey

Junior, stop being orner." It's what Mama used to say to us when we were little, and I say it to Junior out of habit. Daddy used to say it sometimes, too, until he said it to Randall one day and Randall started giggling, and then Daddy figured out Randall was laughing because it sounded like 'horny'. About a year ago I figured out what it was supposed to be after coming across its parent on the vocabulary list for my English class with Miss Dedeaux: 'ornery'. It made me wonder if there were other words Mama mashed like that. They used to pop up in my head sometime when I was doing the stupidest things: 'tetrified' when I was sweeping the kitchen and Daddy came in dripping beer and kicking chairs. 'Belove' when Manny was curling pleasure from me with his fingers in mid-swim in the pit. 'Freegid' when I was laying in bed in November, curled to the wall like I was going to burrow into another cover or I was making room for a body to lay behind me to make me warm. — Jesmyn Ward

You have to have a good vocabulary to do magic. And you have to be able to think on your feet. And be brave enough to speak up. And have an ear for a solid turn of phrase. And you have to actually understand what you're saying - how the words translate into magic. — Rainbow Rowell

I can get by and chatter and talk and tell funny stories, make people laugh, but I don't have as many words, I don't have the vocabulary. I think if I forced myself to read in Spanish - you know, I always say I'm going to, but I lose my patience reading in Spanish, because I really do read the way a third grader does, mouthing the words. That takes a long time! — Sandra Cisneros

Human language is too poor to express the real nature of the Absolute Truth or Ultimate Reality which is Nirvana. Language is created and used by masses of human beings to express things and ideas experienced by their sense organs and their mind. A supramundane experience like that of the Absolute Truth is not of such a category. Therefore there cannot be words to express that experience, just as the fish had no words in his vocabulary to express the nature of the solid land. — Walpola Rahula

most obvious application of functions is defining new vocabulary. Creating new words in regular, human-language prose is usually bad style. But in programming, it is indispensable. — Marijn Haverbeke

Put your vocabulary on the top shelf of your toolbox, and don't make any conscious effort to improve it... One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your shot ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of pre-meditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed. Make yourself a solemn promise right now that you'll never use 'emolument' when you mean 'tip' and you'll never say 'John stopped long enough to perform an act of excretion' when you mean 'John stopped long enough to take a shit'. If you believe 'take a shit' would be considered offensive or inappropriate by your audience, feel free to say 'John stopped long enough to move his bowels'... — Stephen King

I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary' diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive. — James Agee

By reading so much, my vocabulary automatically improved along with my comprehension. — Ben Carson

In so-called primitive societies there are two words for power, mana and taboo: the power which creates and the power which destroys; the power which is benign and the power which is malign. Odd that we have retained in our vocabulary the word for dangerous power, taboo, and have lost mana. — Madeleine L'Engle

My only defense is the acquisition of vocabulary. — Margaret Edson

Sometimes the acutest of agonies are difficult to find expression in the given vocabulary: words fail but pain prevails. — Girdhar Joshi

Most adults have a vocabulary of around 60,000 words, meaning that children must learn 10 to 20 words a day between the ages of eight months and 18 years. And yet the most frequent 100 words account for 60% of all conversations. The most common 4000 words account for 98% of conversation. — David Miller

You slogged from the terrifying emptiness of the blank page to the two most beautiful words in a writer's vocabulary: The End. — Lisa Cron

Henry was aware he had a great vocabulary. It was not the same thing as having the words you needed to express yourself...sounding like you were saying what you felt was not the same as actually pulling it off. — Maggie Stiefvater

In the verbal conflagration of a Shakespeare and a Shelley we smell the ash of words, backwash and effluvium of an impossible cosmogony. The terms encroach upon each other, as though none could attain the equivalent of the inner dilation; this is the hernia of the image, the transcendent rupture of poor words, born of everyday use and miraculously raised to the heart's altitudes. The truths of beauty are fed on exaggerations which, upon the merest analysis, turn out to be monstrous and meaningless. Poetry: demiurgical divagation of the vocabulary ... Has charlatanism ever been more effectively combined with ecstasy? Lying, the wellspring of all tears! such is the imposture of genius and the secret of art. Trifles swollen to the heavens; the improbable, generator of a universe! In every genius coexists a braggart and a god. — Emil Cioran

Vocabulary words are the building blocks of the internal learning structure. Vocabulary is also the tool to better define a problem, seek more accurate solutions, etc. — Ruby K. Payne

A Russian philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin said that "the self is the gift of the other" It seems to me most true now. The genes I carry, the clothes I wear, the food I eat all have come through the hands of others. Even those words I write now, my vocabulary, are not only mine. They are an agreement, a social contract between the two of us. — Rhonda Riley

Sky, wait. The way his voice wraps around my name makes me wish the only word in his entire vocabulary way Sky. — Colleen Hoover

We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them. — Abigail Adams

In the most basic way, writers are defined not by the stories they tell, or their politics, or their gender, or their race, but by the words they use. Writing begins with language, and it is in that initial choosing, as one sifts through the wayward lushness of our wonderful mongrel English, that choice of vocabulary and grammar and tone, the selection on the palette, that determines who's sitting at that desk. Language creates the writer's attitude toward the particular story he's decided to tell. — Donald E. Westlake

The words hot, lot, and got were not apart of a ladies vocabulary. — Rhys Bowen

What I wanted to do was slap him down a bit with wit and words. Grammar and vocabulary as a weapon. But what kind of world would it be if we all took every opportunity presented to us to assault the weak? — Charles Frazier

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way. — Alan Zweibel

To enjoy and learn from what you read you must understand the meanings of the words a writer uses. You do yourself a grave disservice if you read around words you don't know, or worse, merely guess at what they mean without bothering to look them up.
For me, reading has always been not only a quest for pleasure and enlightenment but also a word-hunting expedition, a lexical safari. — Charles Harrington Elster

I will not impress you with words, I will prove to you their definition. It's a genuine vocabulary. — Soar

Geoffrey Miller notes that most adults have a vocabulary of about sixty thousand words. To build that vocabulary, children must learn ten to twenty words a day between the ages of eighteen months and eighteen years. And yet the most frequent one hundred words account for 60 percent of all conversations. The most common four thousand words account for 98 percent of conversations. Why do humans bother knowing — David Brooks

It's okay to send flowers, but don't let the flowers do all the talking. Flowers have a limited vocabulary. About the best flowers can say is that you remembered. But your words tell the rest. — Jim Rohn

Now, Neve, are you about to say no to me?' 'Well, it's just that - ' 'Because the word "no" is not in my vocabulary, along with the words "can't" and "Victoria Beckham". — Sarra Manning

As you can see, the words fair play are not in my vocabulary. Well, they are in my vocabulary, but only to say that they aren't. — Scott Seegert

Every free minute away from dance (my main focus) I was memorizing new English words, either showering, walking or on the toilet. I started reading English books even though I had very limited vocabulary. — Li Cunxin

All of us possess a reading vocabulary as big as a lake but draw from a writing vocabulary as small as a pond. The good news is that the acts of searching and gathering always expand the number of usable words. — Roy Peter Clark

Conservatives or better, pro- corporate apologists hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like " progress ," " opportunity ," and " individualism " into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right ... This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove the reputed brain of George W. Bush as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today. — Bill Moyers

What we need, of course, is a language which will allow us to distinguish the normal or routine fuck from the glorious, the rare, or the lousy one - a fack from a fick, a fick from a fock - but we have more names for parts of horses than we have for kinds of kisses, and our earthy words are all ... well ... 'dirty'. It says something dirty about us, no doubt, because in a society which had a mind for the body and other similarly vital things, there would be a word for coming down, or going up, words for nibbles on the bias, earlobe loving, and every variety of tongue track. After all, how many kinds of birds do we distinguish? We have a name for the Second Coming but none for a second coming. In fact our entire vocabulary for states of consciousness is critically impoverished. — William H Gass

Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words. — Samuel Johnson

Logan spoke Badass.
There were only a few words in the Vocabulary of Badass but each one had a number of meanings. They included beautiful, Christ, fuck, Jesus, and shit.
But the one used most was babe. — Kristen Ashley

[The] defining characteristics of good prose [are]: a preference for short sentences diversified by an occasionally very long one; a tone that is relaxed and almost colloquial; a large vocabulary that enjoys exploiting the different etymological and social levels of words; and an insistence on verbal and logical precision. — F.W. Bateson

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half ... I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop ... I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen. — Mark Twain

Oh, Jesus," he said, wheezing with the effort it took to control
himself. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "You little
innocent. I'm fluent in French, but it isn't my first language." It
was plain by the mortified expression in those green eyes that she
didn't understand, so he explained. "Baby , if I can still think
clearly enough to speak French, then I'm not totally involved in
what I'm doing. It may sound pretty , but it doesn't mean
any thing. Men are different from women; the more excited we are,
the more like cavemen we sound. I could barely speak English with
you, much less French. As I remember, my vocabulary
deteriorated to a few short, explicit words, 'fuck' being the most
prominent."
To his amazement, she blushed, and he smiled at this further
evidence of her charming prudery. "Go to sleep," he said gently.
"Lindsey didn't even rate a replay. — Linda Howard

When you have something meaningful to say, you lose your desire for much grammar; for only in the incompetence of words does one seek the redeeming power of vocabulary. — King Samuel Benson

The world' is man's experience as it appears to, and is moulded by, his ego. It is that less abundant life, which is lived according to the dictates of the insulated self. It is nature denatured by the distorting spectacles of our appetites and revulsions. It is the finite divorced from the Eternal. It is multiplicity in isolation from its non-dual Ground. It is time apprehended as one damned thing after another. It is a system of verbal categories taking the place of the fathomlessly beautiful and mysterious particulars which constitute reality. It is a notion labelled 'God'. It is the Universe equated with the words of our utilitarian vocabulary. — Aldous Huxley

The last motive in the world for acquiring vocabulary should be to impress. Words should be acquired because we urgently need them - to convey, to reach, to express something within us, and to understand others. — Vanna Bonta

We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. — James Nicoll

Oddly, I've never heard of a church or denomination that asked people to affirm a doctrinal statement like this: The purpose of Scripture is to equip God's people for good works. Shouldn't a simple statement like this be far more important than statements with words foreign to the Bible's vocabulary about itself (inerrant, authoritative, literal, revelatory, objective, absolute, propositional, etc.)? — Brian D. McLaren

A limited vocabulary, but one with which you can make numerous combinations, is better than thirty thousand words that only hamper the action of the mind. — Paul Valery

We must be honest here, and not defensive; the issues are now too grave and too urgent. Our inability to see our personal failures is paralleled by our inability to see our institutional and national sins too. It is the identical and same pattern of addiction and denial. Thank God that Pope John Paul II introduced into our vocabulary words like "structural sin" and "institutional evil." It was not even part of the conversation in most of Christian history up to now, as we exclusively concentrated on "personal" sins. The three sources of evil were traditionally called "the world, the flesh, and the devil." We so concentrated on the flesh that we let the world and "the devil" get off scot-free.8 — Richard Rohr

Our vocabulary may become a real time algorithmic word bank.
Could you imagine having a conversation like that?
Where the meaning of words constantly adapts? — Natasha Tsakos

Birdy never felt artistic inclination when armed with a marking implement. What came to her were words, always words, commentary and criticism and correction and simple vocabulary curios; she scratched a few of them on the smooth red wall. — Antonya Nelson

Society. Sins such as adultery, bribery, and betrayal are more like treason than like crime; they damage the social order. Social harmony can be rewoven only by slowly recommitting to relationships and rebuilding trust. The sins of arrogance and pride arise from a perverse desire for status and superiority. The only remedy for them is to humble oneself before others. In other words, people in earlier times inherited a vast moral vocabulary and set of moral tools, developed over centuries and handed down from generation to generation. This was a practical inheritance, like learning how to speak a certain language, which people could use to engage their own moral struggles. — David Brooks

I like to quote Shakespeare. But in this case, the rapper Eminem said it best: Words are a motherfucker. — Jillian Keenan

The language of the culture also reflects the stories of the culture. One word or simple phrasal labels often describe the story adequately enough in what we have termed culturally common stories. To some extent, the stories of a culture are observable by inspecting the vocabulary of that culture. Often entire stories are embodied in one very culture-specific word. The story words unique to a culture reveal cultural differences. — Roger Schank

I need to get a greater vocabulary than what I have and when I get mad and my brain searches for a word. I have to find different words and to do that you need to have more of an education. — Duane Chapman

And one of our vocabulary words was nonconformist. I just dug that word. I heard the explanation, the definition, and I felt like I had just learned about a new hero in a kick-ass Marvel comic book. — Nick Offerman

I don't swear much; I've taken those words out of my vocabulary, and having kids, you have to have two sets of language! — Keith Urban

That was ... " he began. "No. I'm done. I don't have the words. You sucked my vocabulary out with my cum. — Tiffany Reisz

How many words are you having trouble with, sir?"
"Just the ones that I've highlighted."
"I count at least a dozen, and I haven't gotten out of the first paragraph."
"That's as far as I got, too. I'm not sure you and I speak the same language. — Howard Tayler

The majority of the people in the United States have had only an elementary education and have a speaking vocabulary of about two thousand words. (Even a well-educated person has a speaking vocabulary of approximately nine thousand words.) — Judith C. Waller

Words can't describe... shouldn't be in a writer's vocabulary. — Mary M. Forbes

There must be a way for man to attain all possible pleasures, all the powers and knowledge that nature can grant him, and still serve God
a God who speaks in deeds, not in words, and whose vocabulary is the Cosmos. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

Students who take Latin are more proficient and earn higher scores on the verbal SAT exam. The business world has long recognized the importance of a rich vocabulary and rates it high as evidence of executive potential and success. Understanding the etymological history of a word gives the user vividness, color, punch, and precision. It also seems that the clearer and more numerous our verbal images, the greater our intellectual power. Wheelock's Latin is profuse with the etymological study of English and vocabulary enrichment. Our own experiences have shown that students will not only remember vocabulary words longer and better when they understand their etymologies, but also will use them with a sharper sense of meaning and nuance. — Frederic M. Wheelock

A true lady should have the wit and the imagination, or at least the very restraint, to express herself without resorting herself to such base vocabulary. — Ari Marmell

The man who once famously pronounced "I know words, I have the best words" scorched through the primaries using the vocabulary of a signing gorilla ("China - money - bad!"). — Matt Taibbi

The more clearly we are able to express ourselves, the less room there is for ambiguity. The more elaborate and the more precise our vocabulary, the greater the scope for thought and expression. Language is about subtlety and nuance. It is power and it is potent. We can woo with words and we can wound. Despots fear the words of the articulate opponent. Successful revolutions are achieved with words as much as with weapons. — John Humphrys

Take the sailor," he said. "he signs on to a new ship. He's surrounded by nothing but strangers. Not only do they come from other towns and parts of his own country, but often from completely different nations. He has to learn to work with them. His vocabulary's broadened, he learns new words and grammar, and he comes across new ways of thinking. he turns into a different man, unlike the one who spends his life plowing the same old furrow. These are the men the world needs, not nationalists and warmongers. — Carsten Jensen

I believe that should is one of the most damaging words in our language. Every time we use it, we are, in effect, saying that we are wrong, or we were wrong, or we're going to be wrong. I would like to take the word should out of our vocabulary forever and replace it with the word could. This word gives us a choice, and we're never wrong. — Louise Hay