A Quote by C. S. Lewis

Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one.

C. S. Lewis

Quote Topics

Always Direct Long Plain Prefer Vague Word

Quote Author

C. S. Lewis
British - Writer
November 29, 1898 - November 22, 1963

Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them.

C. S. Lewis

Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

Henry Watson Fowler

Usually in France we prefer to say bad things about the Nouvelle Vague, but I'm always impressed with its freedom and the fact of not making a film to give your opinion but just as a piece of art, which to me means the Nouvelle Vague.

Arnaud Desplechin

I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct. And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that.

Julie Taymor

A word about 'plain English.' The phrase certainly shouldn't connote drab and dreary language. Actually, plain English is typically quite interesting to read. It's robust and direct-the opposite of gaudy, pretentious language. You achieve plain English when you use the simplest, most straightforward way of expressing an idea. You can still choose interesting words. But you'll avoid fancy ones that have everyday replacements meaning precisely the same thing.

Bryan A. Garner

I try to write in plain brown blocks of American speech but occasionally set in an ancient word or a strange word just to startle the reader a little bit and to break up the monotony of the plain American cadence.

James Laughlin

We Irish prefer embroideries to plain cloth. To us Irish, memory is a canvas--stretched, primed, and ready for painting on. We love the "story" part of the word "history," and we love it trimmed out with color and drama, ribbons and bows. Listen to our tunes, observe a Celtic scroll: we always decorate our essence.

Frank Delaney

Is photography art?... The pure definition of the word 'art' alone is too vague today to break one's brain and soul about it. Let us take a little vacation from this word.

Ernst Haas

I prefer the word 'homemaker' because 'housewife' always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.

Bella Abzug

I think "immoral" is probably the wrong word to use...I prefer the word "unethical."

Ivan Boesky

A truth discovered always seems so plain and simple that we wonder why the discovery was so long delayed.

Vash Young

In our long and obsessive passion for youth, we have - more than any other modern society - avoided direct approach to age and to dying by denying them in word, in fact, and - above all - in worth.

Marya Mannes

The people have only a very vague direct power. They have the power of voting against the administration, again after its decisions have been taken; but they have no way of getting into the question of policy-making, decision-making, except insofar as the vague forces and pressures of public debate and public opinion have their impact on the President. The President still has to decide. He can't go to the people and ask them to decide for him; he has to make the decision. In that sense he was condemned to be a dictator.

Walter Millis

I always wanted to write and direct films for as long as I can remember.

Sam Levinson

The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings -- crowded, active, thick. But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow's horizons are vague and its demands are few.