A Quote by Steven Pinker
A word is an arbitrary label - that's the foundation of linguistics. But many people think otherwise. They believe in word magic: that uttering a spell, incantation, curse, or prayer can change the world. Don't snicker: Would you ever say, 'Nothing has gone wrong yet' without looking for wood to knock?
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The Word 'Repulse': I hate this word. I believe 'repel' is a perfectly good word, and 'repulsion' is the noun, as well as the title of an excellent Dinosaur Jr. song. A compulsion compels you; an impulse impels you. Nobody ever says 'compulse' or 'impulse' as a verb. So why would you ever say 'repulse'? This word haunts me in my sleep, like a silver dagger dancing before my eyes. Renee looked it up and I was wrong. But I still kind of think I'm right.
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent If the unheard, unspoken Word is unspoken, unheard; Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world; And the light shone in the darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled About the center of the silent Word. Oh my people, what have I done unto thee. Where shall the word be found, where shall the word Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.
Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. to his daughter Martha
In short, I will preach it [the Word], teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.
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.
I would like to think that I curse expertly - it's not something that I do without considering it. I never curse without intending to; it's not something I resort to because of inability to articulate or find the correct word.
The rower need to know technique and has to be in shape. He won't wrong by using strategy. Yet what it takes to win races is the ability to reach inside and pull out something to keep you going - no, to go faster - when you have nothing left to give. There's a word for what that takes and the word is not magic, the word is guts.
I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change peoples consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman.
You are asking, 'Is the concept of soul mates more useful than marriage?' Concepts don't matter. What matters is your understanding. You can change the word marriage to the word soul mates, but you are the same. You will make the same hell out of soul mates as you have been making out of marriage - nothing has changed, only the word, the label. Don't believe in labels too much.
Bibles read without prayer; sermons heard without prayer; marriages contracted without prayer; journeys undertaken without prayer; residences chosen without prayer; friendships formed without prayer; the daily act of prayer itself hurried over, or gone through without heart: these are the kind of downward steps by which many a Christian descends to a condition of spiritual palsy, or reaches the point where God allows them to have a tremendous fall.
I will always encourage people to seek out the word of God, because I do believe that THAT is where truth really comes from. I believe that when things go wrong if you instead of looking at that as a negative, you choose to rejoice in all things. It's the hardest thing in the world but I think that that is what ultimately leads to happiness.
The one affectation I have forced on the publisher... are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter.
Death is a word in the dictionary. I don't believe in that word. I think the most appropriate word is 'departure' because we are energy and you can't create or destroy energy, you can only change its form.
If you spell a word wrong you have some temptation to think it wrong.
"Immigrant" has become a dirty word. It is not a bad word. It's not a curse or a swear word. It's not a dirty word and it's nothing to be ashamed about. I am proud to be a second generation immigrant. I am proud of my heritage. We are all immigrants and we need to start owning the concept.
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