A Quote by Stanley Fish

People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved.

Stanley Fish

Quote Topics

Achieved Been Degree Desired Effect Measured Order People Produce Sentence Sentences Speak Success Which Write

Quote Author

Stanley Fish
American - Writer
Born: April 19, 1938

In the performance of an illocutionary act in the literal utterance of a sentence, the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect; and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expression with the production of that effect.

John Searle

Flowers produce an effect on me which can only be produced in an equal degree by music.

Charlotte Alington Barnard

I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.

Thomas Jefferson

It is always understood as an expression of condemnation when anything in Literature or Art is said to be done for effect; and yet to produce an effect is the aim and end of both.

George Henry Lewes

If we define a miracle as an effect of which the cause is unknown to us, then we make our ignorance the source of miracles! And the universe itself would be a standing miracle. A miracle might be perhaps defined more exactly as an effect which is not the consequence or effect of any known laws of nature.

Charles Babbage

We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.

William Hazlitt

The book works better if I know everything I can about the ending. Not just what happens, but how it happens and what the language is; not just the last sentence, but enough of the sentences surrounding that last sentence to know what the tone of voice is. I imagined it as something almost musical. Then you are writing toward something; you know the sound of your voice at the end of the story. That's how you want to sound in those final sentences: the degree that it is uplifting or not, the degree that it is melancholic or not.

John Irving

The greenhouse effect of carbon-dioxide emissions does produce gentle warming if it is not counteracted by unpredictable natural phenomena, but it cannot be measured directly against the volume of such emissions.

Conrad Black

In macroeconomic theory, there is this argument that what the Fed does has no effect on unemployment, no effect on investment, no effect on the rate of GDP growth.

Paul Romer

The best time to write is when your life is in the toilet. Writing offers an escape from your problems, so if you force yourself to write when you're in the doldrums, it will have the perverse effect of cheering you up. At the very least, it allows you to inflict your pain on your characters, which has the dual effect of giving them more depth while relieving your own tension.

Sabrina Jeffries

If poetry alters the way in which the reader views the world, then it has had its desired effect.

John Barton

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

Philip Roth

People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The effect is on the body, too. Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect. Variety of form and brilliancy of color in the objects presented to patients, are actual means of recovery.

Florence Nightingale

You are smart people. You know that the tax cuts have not fueled record revenues. You know what it takes to establish causality. You know that the first order effect of cutting taxes is to lower tax revenues. We all agree that the ultimate reduction in tax revenues can be less than this first order effect, because lower tax rates encourage greater economic activity and thus expand the tax base. No thoughtful person believes that this possible offset more than compensated for the first effect for these tax cuts. Not a single one.

Andrew Samwick

The Compound Effect is a must-read book for success seekers. You want to know what it takes? You want to know what to do? It's all in these pages. The Compound Effect is a clear and concise success operation manual!