Top 447 Phrases Quotes & Sayings

The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.

I got tired of everybody repeating the same phrases in the hip-hop world.

People have a good time with all the catch phrases.

I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs.

These repetitive words and phrases are merely methods of convincing the subconscious mind.

We all know that little words or phrases can mean a lot, yet so few of us know just what to say. Phrases, such as 'chin up,' or 'it could be worse,' usually have the opposite effect; they feel tired and impersonal, even dismissive.

A man in all the world's new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.

Most damning of phrases: He meant well.

Well, within a phrase. And with a series of phrases, you can certainly create the effect of diminuendo and crescendo, no question.

Male philosophers coin phrases -- 'virtue is its own reward' -- and female workers embody them.

An excellent precept for writers: Have a clear idea of all the phrases and expressions you need, and you will find them.

A truce to idle phrases!

I still live today with my mom sending me, you know, Hebrew Scriptures or phrases or celebrating.

Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.

The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.

I write short phrases and used to think they were poems!

[Bob] Dylan would cut out phrases from magazines and then paste them together.

When we hear phrases like 'New World Order,' we release the safety catches on our revolvers.

They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.

You can't really conduct your life by one or two phrases.

You have these catch-phrases that you associate with 'The X-Files': 'Trust No One,' 'Deny Everything.' 'Believe the Lie' was one of them.

Sometimes I feel people try to be too complex. Some of the greatest songs are so simple. The simplest phrases.

I need a little language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as children speak when they come into the room and find their mother sewing and pick up some scrap of bright wool, a feather, or a shred of chintz. I need a howl; a cry. When the storm crosses the marsh and sweeps over me where I lie in the ditch unregarded I need no words. Nothing neat. Nothing that comes down with all its feet on the floor. None of those resonances and lovely echoes that break and chime from nerve to nerve in our breasts making wild music, false phrases. I have done with phrases.

I'm a Roman Catholic. Or was. I was brought up that way and used to say my prayers every night, but I don't pray to God any more. I might use the usual phrases I picked up from my parents, 'Oh, if God spares me next year...' or 'Please God...' but they're only phrases.

I'm pretty good at inventing phrases - you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnopaedically* obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.

I want to leave my readers with a sequence of ideas/phrases that makes them question something they'd taken for granted. Or that confuses them to the point that they laugh, but contains one or two phrases/lines that stick in their minds.

You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.

The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything.

In phrases as brief as a breath worldly wisdom concentrates.

Eventually you'll take the phrases and rhythm patterns you've copped and begin to put your own mark on them

The triumphs of a mysterious non-meeting are desolate ones; unspoken phrases, silent words.

It is the compelling power of great thoughts and ideas to engender phrases of equal size.

[Scientists] define these [terms] in tight phrases which convey a meaning only to those who already understand it.

Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate itself in empty phrases.

We have retained the forms and phrases of a republic, but in reality we are living under an oligarchy, not of courtesan, but of bureaucrats.

One of the most overused phrases in political commentary is that someone is running a 'negative' campaign filled with 'attack' ads.

A politician is forced to make a habit of noble phrases and optimistic lies. In the end they infect himself.

Phrases that have historical significance or become headlines don't just magically appear in the moment. They are mindfully planned.

Sometimes he even embarrassed the company by phrases suggesting that there was some difference between a Liberal and a Conservative.

Repetition for no reason is a sign of carelessness or pretentiousness, but there are plenty of good reasons to repeat words and phrases.

Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.

I never liked writing concluding paragraphs to papers - where you repeat what you've already said with phrases like 'In summation', and 'To conclude'.

It's not often that I get to remember and use phrases like "on out my farm" or "powerful ugly" in modern scripts.

If you're having a hard time being compassionate to or forgiving of yourself or others, you repeat these four phrases directed to yourself or the other person: "I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you." And just by saying and feeling those phrases, you will find your heart starts to melt.

I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found the story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?

If my kids were to make a talking doll of me as a mother, one of my recorded phrases would be 'I will throw that in the trash.' 'If you don't put that down right now, I will throw that in the trash.' It's very funny to hear myself say certain things - like noticing which phrases become the most popular to use.

Travelers are much at the mercy of phrases ... vast generalizations formulate in their exposed brains.

I know all the new phrases: 'cowabunga,' 'radical,' cat's pajamas,' 'duh,' and 'hey, homie don't play that.

A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.

I collect words and phrases for naming the children of my brush.

Some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.

It is in the prime of youth that man sinks into empty phrases and grimaces. It's in this smithy that our maturity is forged.

This be my pilgrimage and goal Daily to march and find The secret phrases of the soul, The evangels of the mind.

Lao Tsu doesn't seem to hold to much stock for words or phrases or teachings.

I don't analyze too much, because then I'll question, 'Why do I write down all of these random little phrases?'

I use not casual phrases but imagistic phrases that create a rhythm of natural presence.

...He was just scraps of words and dislocated phrases.

If I can learn a couple of phrases in Italian but do mostly weird, absurd music things, people will like it.

There are phrases that are totally cliche that we, as songwriters, owe it to ourselves to not use again.

I know a girl made of memories and phrases, lives her whole life in chapters and phases.