A Quote by William Safire

Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?

William Safire

Quote Topics

Available Noun Quite Right Set Straight Use Why

Quote Author

William Safire
American - Author
December 17, 1929 - September 27, 2009

When we put words together - adjective with noun, noun with verb, verb with object - we start to talk to each other.

Donald Hall

The concept of why is already in the vernacular. It is now a noun. "That company doesn't know their why." "They need to learn their why." "That politician needs to understand his why." We talk about it as a noun. That never existed prior to 2009. That never existed prior to 2006 when I first started articulating it. This is the most amazing thing to me. It has now become a concept. It's part of the way we think about businesses and transactions and decisions.

Simon Sinek

Jason Sudeikis said an SNL go-to for naming people was: regular first name, noun last name. My noun was Beard.

Brendan Hunt

How can an adjective in front of a noun not describe the noun? There are dwarf stars, but they're still considered stars.

Alan Stern

I would say 'woman' used to be a noun, and now it is a noun and also an adjective. And words change their functions in that way. It's one of the most common phenomena about words. They start as one thing, and they end up as something else.

Deborah Tannen

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.

Ambrose Bierce

Art is an idea that has found its perfect visual expression. And design is the vehicle by which this expression is made possible. Art is a noun, and design is a noun and also a verb. Art is a product and design is a process. Design is the foundation of all the arts.

Paul Rand

Why indeed must 'God' be a noun? Why not a verb - the most active and dynamic of all.

Mary Daly

Human, Allen, is an adjective, and its use as a noun is in itself regrettable.

William S. Burroughs

Do you think it's possible that things that seem to be discrete in three dimensions might all be part of the same bigger object in four dimensions? ...What if humanity- that collective noun we so often employ- really is, at a higher level, a singular noun? What it what we perceive in three dimensions as seven billion individual human beings are really all just aspects of one giant being?

Robert J. Sawyer

Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.

Fred Rogers

Whatever one wishes to say, there is one noun only by which to express it, one verb only to give it life, one adjective only which will describe it. One must search until one has discovered them, this noun, this verb, this adjective, and never rest content with approximations, never resort to trickery, however happy, or to vulgarism, in order to dodge the difficulty.

Guy de Maupassant

Hyacinth,” Lady Bridgerton said in a vaguely disapproving voice, “do try to speak in complete sentences.” Hyacinth looked at her mother with a surprised expression. “Biscuits. Are. Good.” She cocked her head to the side. “Noun. Verb. Adjective.” “Hyacinth.” “Noun. Verb. Adjective.” Colin said, wiping a crumb from his grinning face. “Sentence. Is. Correct.

Julia Quinn

A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exit in nature. Things are only the terminal points, or rather the meeting points of actions, cross sections cut through actions, snapshots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract motion, be possible in nature. The eye sees noun and verb as one, things in motion, motion in things.

Ernest Fenollosa

Saw you walking barefoot taking a long look at the new moon's eyelid later spread sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair asleep but not oblivious of the unslept unsleeping elsewhere Tonight I think no poetry will serve Syntax of rendition: verb pilots the plane adverb modifies action verb force-feeds noun submerges the subject noun is choking verb disgraced goes on doing now diagram the sentence

Adrienne Rich

'State' can be a word that is a noun or a verb or an adverb - it's kind of why I chose that title. It's not to confound the audience but to keep me from painting myself into a cul-de-sac in the early stages of making a record by having too high concept or having some really strict set of rules I have to adhere to.

Todd Rundgren

A Quote by William Safire

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors