[QUOTE=Typo Knig]
“There are 500,000 words in the English language - and seven of them you cannot say on television.” - George Carlin
Your HS English teacher friend may be too fond of employment to want to go there, but I like the quote. More recent estimates are 1-2 million words in English (sorry, no cite). And now you can say anything on cable …
“What does the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand?
What does the mind do, each morning, waking?” The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. LeGuin
“A Ph.D. is not an inoculation against stupidity.” - Robert L. Park, Ph.D.
“They don’t call economics ‘the dismal science’ because it’s fair. They call it that because of Sir Eustis Dismal, the 18th Century Brittish economist who suggested making smokestacks out of children.” -John Hodgeman, The Daily Show Wed. 05/17/06
That last one is a joke, you do realize that, M-Okay?
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…and Hodgeman is best known as the PC in those Apple commercials
[QUOTE=Xema]
A friend who teaches high-school English put me up to this. What she seeks is short quotations that are examples of excellent use of the English language.
The quotes can be up to a short paragraph in length, though brevity is the soul of wit. They should be fully attributed when possible. The goal is not so much an admirable sentiment as a well-expressed one.
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“Mr. President, I bet my husband that I could get three words from you this evening.”
“You lose.”
(Calvin Coolidge)
Nature and Nature’s Laws lay hid in night.
God said “Let Newton be!”; and all was light
Not brief, and maybe not very pithy, but I’ve always found the Gettysburg address to be a fine example of well-crafted english.
“…But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
–Abraham Lincoln, 1863
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. " - George Orwell; 1984
“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.” - George Orwell; Reflections on Gandhi
“The distinction that really matters is not between violence and non-violence, but between having and not having the appetite for power. There are people who are convinced of the wickedness both of armies and of police forces, but who are nevertheless much more intolerant and inquisitorial in outlook than the normal person who believes that it is necessary to use violence in certain circumstances. They will not say to somebody else, “Do this, that and the other or you will go to prison”, but they will, if they can, get inside his brain and dictate his thoughts for him in the minutest particulars.” - George Orwell; Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool
“Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately, in England at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever.” (Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest)
And then I give you the last line of my sig, which I rather like. It is from Pickwick Papers.
[QUOTE=KidScruffy]
Not brief, and maybe not very pithy, but I’ve always found the Gettysburg address to be a fine example of well-crafted english.
[/QUOTE]
No need for qualification here. There can be few examples in history of getting more said in fewer words.
by General George S. Patton at the battle of Bastogne when asked by the Germans if he was going to surrender.
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Nitpick: Patton relieved the city. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe actually said it. Or rather, he apparently said something much stronger that got cleaned up by his personnel before the message was delivered to the Germans.
This one has surfaced in my mind:
“And this stillness of life did not in any way resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention.” - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness