A Quote by Mark Twain

Use the right word, not its second cousin.

Mark Twain

Quote Topics

Cousin Right Right Word Second Use Word

Quote Author

Mark Twain
American - Writer
November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910

The fundamental rights of [humanity] are, first: the right of habitation; second, the right to move freely; third, the right to the soil and subsoil, and to the use of it; fourth, the right of freedom of labor and of exchange; fifth, the right to justice; sixth, the right to live within a natural national organization; and seventh, the right to education.

Albert Schweitzer

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

George Orwell

I have to use the word 'insurgent' because I can't think of a better word right now.

Peter Pace

The use of the right word, the exact word, is the difference between a pencil with a sharp point and a thick crayon.

Peter Marshall

Religion is only another word for the right use of a man's whole self, instead of a wrong use of himself.

Henry Ward Beecher

Before the scene, before the paragraph, even before the sentence, comes the word. Individual words and phrases are the building blocks of fiction, the genes that generate everything else. Use the right words, and your fiction can blossom. The French have a phrase for it - le mot juste - the exact right word in the exact right position.

Nancy Kress

I'm in love with my second cousin.

Bob Dylan

Honestly, that puts a lot of weight on your shoulders because you're representing so many great people who want to see so much. And they're hungry for ... I hate to use the word change because [Barack] Obama used to use that word ... but they're hungry for real change; they're hungry for making things right.

Donald Trump

The word "Witch" carries so many negative connotations that many people wonder why we use the word at all. Yet to reclaim the word "Witch" is to reclaim our right, as women, to be powerful; as men, to know the feminine within as divine.

Starhawk

I have a cousin, a second cousin, who lives in L.A., and she was with me while I was getting ready. She was talking about her father and his brothers. And I remember my mother's tales of how competitive they were with each other and how they would play for blood, you know. And I thought - I'm an only child, and I don't know what that's like. I have to figure out the Southern thing.

Cynthia Nixon

The first word gives origin to the second, the first and second to the third, and the third to the fourth, and so on. You cannot begin with the second word.

N. Scott Momaday

You know, Obama says we can't use the word "terrorism." We can't use the word "foreign." We can't use any of these provocative words that insult them. "Islamic terrorism" is a phrase not permitted to be used by the US government.

Rush Limbaugh

I would teach my child to respect what is right - the word right is a difficult word to use - I would teach him to respect the intrinsic value of things. Do you see what I mean? The true proportion of things.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Either you allow Holy Scriptures to change you, or you will normally try to use it to change--and clobber--other people. It is the height of idolatry to use the supposed Word of God so that my small self can be in control and be right. But I am afraid this has been more the norm than the exception in the use of the Bible.