Phrase It Quotes

#1. Humour and high seriousness ... Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of comedy and darkness. Comedy without darkness rapidly becomes trivial. And darkness without comedy rapidly becomes unbearable.

Mark Haddon

#2. How many times did we hear [Barack] Obama say, 'You didn't build that. You didn't build that - no, you need government.' We even saw Hillary Clinton say - remember her phrase - 'It takes a village to raise a child.' In other words, your children are not your children - they belong to the community.

Rafael Cruz

#3. And the stains would never wash out. That's what Lukas was saying. She would always have hurt her father. Was that the way to phrase it? Always have had. It was immortal tense. A new rule of grammar.

Hugh Howey

#4. Have you ever heard the phrase, it is better to keep your mouth closed and have people wonder if you are stupid than open it and remove all doubt? (Hakim al Harbi)

Vince Flynn

#5. FACT: In 1991, a document was locked in the safe of the director of the CIA. The document is still there today. Its cryptic text includes references to an ancient portal and an unknown location underground. The document also contains the phrase "It's buried out there somewhere.

Dan Brown

#6. It's only when you've lost someone that you realize the nonsense of that
phrase "It's a small world". It isn't. It's a vast, devouring world, especially if you're alone.

Clive Barker

#7. Thus when I have to summarize naturalized spirituality in a single phrase, it is this: the thoughtful love of life.

Robert C. Solomon

#8. I quickly became aware that the phrase "it can only get better" could very quickly turn into "it could always be worse," because it was.

Savannah Grace

#9. Was that the way to phrase it? Always have had. It was immortal tense. A new rule of grammar. Always have had gotten friends killed.

Hugh Howey

#10. I can phrase it as a question if it will make your feathers lie flat.

Leigh Bardugo

#11. When you've fallen from the sky, been abandoned by your friend, suffered police brutality, metamorphosed into a goat, lost your work as well as your wife, learned the power of hatred and regained human shape, what is there left to do but, as you would no doubt phrase it, demand your rights?

Salman Rushdie

#12. It's hard to believe. Where does the times go?' Betty sighs. 'I've always hated that phrase. It makes it would like time went on a holiday, and is expected back any day now. Time flies is another one I hate. Apparently, time does quite a bit of traveling, though.

Gabrielle Zevin

#13. If we have to sum up the Book of Revelation in one phrase, it would be, 'Jesus wins.'

Jud Wilhite

#14. I've always had a will to succeed, to win, however you phrase it.

Jack Kent Cooke

#15. When preparing a document, most people have a pretty good idea of what they intend to write about but no specific plan for what to say or how to phrase it.

Blinkist

#16. Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.

Woodrow Wilson

#17. In England you have a good phrase. It is 'to bring the game into disrepute.

Arsene Wenger

#18. Everyone is familiar with the phrase 'It's not what you know, it's who you know' and that's because it's so often true. You

Enterprise Nation

#19. It was something like the word 'it' in the phrase 'it is raining' or 'it is night'. What that 'it' referred to Quinn had never known

Paul Auster

#20. If the women's movement can be summed up in a single phrase, it is 'the right to choose'.

Beatrice Faust

#21. Stream of consciousness is a muddle-headed phrase. It is not a stream, it's a pool, a sea, an ocean.

Dorothy M. Richardson

#22. Silence asks the questions that are too awkward to phrase. It even asks the questions one does not know to ask.

Robin Hobb

#23. Over my dead body, I thought. Yes, even immortals use that phrase. It has extra oomph for us.

Cate Tiernan

#24. The way I try to phrase it when I am pressed for time is to say that I am sexually submissive, and socially assertive.

Senta Holland

#25. Nelson Mandela was in jail when I was really young, and Winnie Mandela was one of the biggest faces of the movement. In South Africa we have a common phrase - it's like a chant in the street and at rallies: "Wathint' abafazi, wathint' imbokodo." Which means, "You strike a woman, you strike a rock."

Trevor Noah

#26. True religion is a union of God with the soul, a real participation of the divine nature, the very image of God drawn upon the soul, or in the apostle's phrase, it is Christ formed in us.

Henry Scougal

#27. I'll admit, sometimes I've paid the bills with acting. You know the phrase, 'It's one for the money, two for the showreel.' I don't want that as a director. I don't want to compromise myself. There's a big old wide world out there. I want to explore it.

Paddy Considine

#28. When someone has the wit to coin a useful phrase, it ought to be acclaimed and broadcast or it will perish.

Jack Smith

#29. If love was magic you wouldn't be amazed, you much rather look at reality in a daze. see love is merely a four letter phrase, It's here It's there it may never change. For love is a verb an action, a zing, It is never a person place or thing.

Aja Taylor

#30. Writing is the same as music. It's in how you phrase it, how you hold back the note, bend it, shape it, then release it. And what you don't play is as important as what you do say.

Robert Creeley

#31. The most powerful call to action of anything that we've ever tested: Let's get to work.I didnt create that phrase. It came from Rick Scott, the current governor of Florida.

Frank Luntz

#32. Another very common use, in all cultures, of psychoactive substances is to give people transcendent experiences. To allow them to transcend their human and ego boundaries to feel greater contact with the supernatural, or with the spiritual, or with the divine, however they phrase it in their terms.

Andrew Weil

#33. I'm not that good looking. That's why 'Gangnam Style' works. If someone handsome uses that phrase it's just awkward. But if someone like me uses it, it's funny.

Psy

#34. For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

John Berger

#35. Many ideas have been transformed by adding one crucial adjective-women's bank, women's music, women's studies, women's caucus. That adjective did more than change a phrase. It implied a lot of new content: child care, flexible work hours, new standards of creditworthiness, new symbolism, new lyrics.

Gloria Steinem

#36. How to phrase it? Ma, I want to fall in love with a fella.

Larry Kramer

#37. I often pray, though I'm not really sure Anyone's listening; and I phrase it carefully, just in case He's literary.

Mignon McLaughlin

#38. Of all the traps and pitfalls in life, self-disesteem is the deadliest, and the hardest to overcome: for it is a pit designed and dug by our own hands, summed up in the phrase, 'It's no use - I can't do it.'

Maxwell Maltz

#39. I think my dad was happy. I phrase it like this because he seldom showed much emotion. Hugs and kisses wwere a rarity for me growing up, and when they did happen, they often struck me as lifeless, something he did because he felt he was supposed to, not because he wanted to.

Nicholas Sparks

#40. Starting today, that voice in your head is no longer allowed to utter the words: "I don't have time." Instead, the voice must use the phrase, "It's not a priority.

Steve Kamb

#41. Leukemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin and at least eight cases of leukemia
had been treated successfully by Dianetics after medicine had
traditionally given up. The source of leukemia has been reported to be
an engram containing the phrase 'It turns my blood to water.

L. Ron Hubbard

#42. Telling is not selling; never make a statement if you can phrase it in the form of a question.

Brian Tracy

#43. In the books by Ruy-Sanchez we find again the erotic conviction that allows us to read with all the skin. The erotic, in his narratives is not a subject or a phrase, it is the clay of what they are made. In his novels every experience, trivial or extraordinary, breaths through the erotic.

Alberto Manguel

#44. When you're singing we all phrase each other in the most remarkable ways. I might hit some sort of thing I've never done before - some vocal pattern. Bonzo will pick it up - he'll phrase with me instantly and then Pagey may join in or start some other phrase - it's like a quadrant.

Robert Plant

#45. Obama wants people, as many people as he can get, covered by the government, exchanges, however you want to phrase it, and the more the better, and the sooner, the better, making it impossible to take it away. Meaning, making it impossible to repeal Obamacare.

Rush Limbaugh

#46. Well, we'll have to agree to disagree." I hated that phrase. It was code for, "I know you're too obtuse to ever see how I right I am, so to get any satisfaction out of this discussion, I'm going to pretend to be more reasonable than you. Oh, and get the last word in.

Jess Lourey

#47. Spare time is like spare change. It's hard to quantify, the definition of that phrase. What do I do when I'm not onstage singing, or sleeping, with or without someone else? I watch movies.

Marilyn Manson

#48. It's important to preach like there's a broken heart on every pew. That's always been a phrase that stuck with me. Not everybody is having a tough time, but you can bet your buck that there's a good tenth of your church that's going through a hard season. There really is a broken heart on every pew.

Max Lucado

#49. It's amazing how much power a simple false phrase repeated can have.

Kinley MacGregor

#50. Yes, we were amazed when that happened. It was a real joke to us. Konrad Lueg and I did a Happening, and we used the phrase just for the Happening, to have a catchy name for it; and then it immediately got taken up and brought into use. There's no defence against that - and really it's no bad thing.

Gerhard Richter

#51. I began thinking there should be an American phrase book, 'cause I've got an Italian phrase book, and an Arabic one ... now a British one. I think it'd be pretty good to have an American phrase book.

Joe Strummer

#52. Bette Davis had a phrase that called it "cigarette smoking acting" .

Joe Eszterhas

#53. Listen to any musical phrase or rhythm, and grasp it as a whole, and you thereupon have present in you the image, so to speak, of the divine knowledge of the temporal order.

Josiah Royce

#54. The phrase 'perception is reality' is overused generally. But perception can be reality in monetary policy. The bond market doesn't act merely on what it sees. It acts on what it expects of the Fed or the government.

Amity Shlaes

#55. The only phrase I've ever disliked is, 'Why, we've always done it that way.' I always tell young people, 'Go ahead and do it. You can always apologize later.'

Grace Hopper

#56. It is simple nonsense to speak of the fixed tempo of any particular vocal phrase. Each voice has its peculiarities.

Anton Seidl

#57. You don't need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you've written, you should be able to point to any given element - be that a line of dialogue, a descriptive phrase, a plot point - and say why it's there.

Diana Gabaldon

#58. That first phrase-please bless me, Father, for I have sinned-was so humbling and so total, Matt always felt a kind of absolution as soon as he said it

Patricia McCormick

#59. Ceviche is an acquired taste, a phrase which here means something you don't like the first few times you eat it ...

Lemony Snicket

#60. You ever heard the phrase 'nice guys finish last'? It's true. Been true my whole life. So, maybe it'd be nice for me for a change, if someone thought I was worth fightin' for.

Lorelei James

#61. (Thirty-nine steps)' was the phrase; and at its last time of use it ran - '(Thirty-nine steps, I counted them - high tide 10.17 p.m.)'. I could make nothing of that.

John Buchan

#62. No man can sincerely resolve to apply to his daily life the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth without sensing a change in his own nature. The phrase, 'born again', has a deeper significance than many people attach to it. This changed feeling may be indescribable, but it is real.

David O. McKay

#63. It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'; that it was the first government which made a criticism of administration as much a part of the polity as administration itself. This critical opposition is the consequence of cabinet government.

Walter Bagehot

#64. I often ask the question: Is it impossible to have a simple life?
The world is not simple, Claire said.
The world is not simple. Joe repeated the phrase like the line of a great poem.

Elizabeth Brundage

#65. For years we have heard the phrase "every member a missionary." That is not a choice. It is a fact of our membership. Our choice is to speak to others about the gospel or not.

Henry B. Eyring

#66. There's a phrase we live by in America: "In God We Trust". It's right there where Jesus would want it: on our money.

Bill Maher

#67. Sun'qhela is a phrase with many shades of meaning. It says "don't undermine me," "don't underestimate me," and "just try me." It's a command and a threat, all at once. It

Trevor Noah

#68. A Latin phrase says: De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Speak no ill of the dead. But it is better to say this way: Speak the truth of the living and speak the truth of the dead!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#69. The universe is so immense that it appears immutable, and that the duration of a planet such as that of the earth is only a chapter, less than that, a phrase, less still, only a word of the universe's history.

Camille Flammarion

#70. When you hear the phrase "rescue the financial system," translate it in your mind into "keep the debts on the books." They are trying to find a way for you (and debtor nations too) to keep paying and for the debt to keep growing.

Charles Eisenstein

#71. But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age; and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to an older day..

James Joyce

#72. The Haitians, who knew something about suffering and survival, had a beautiful phrase ... The Translation is not perfect, but the nut of it was: 'The season of pain is never over until the sky begins to cry.

Rick Bragg

#73. There's such a cynicism about the phrase 'I laughed all the way to the bank.' It's as though money is what you're doing, rather than playing music. If you're playing a money game, why not get into banking?

Artie Shaw

#74. Every musical phrase has a purpose. It's like talking. If you talk with a particular purpose, people listen to you, but if you just recite, it's not as meaningful.

Itzhak Perlman

#75. The phrase "think for one's self" is a pleonasm. Unless one does it for one's self, it isn't thinking.

John Dewey

#76. Is this what Principal Fontana meant by the phrase 'well-rounded'?
It's fucking spherical, Catamounts.

Sam Lipsyte

#77. When I'm writing, I generally toy with an idea until it manifests itself - meaning a phrase or a tune comes into my head and eventually begins to jell. When something hits me, I write it down immediately. I don't wait, or it's gone.

Paul Anka

#78. [A]s if it were not the masterful will which subjugates the forces of nature to be the genii of the lamp ... that forces a life-thought into a pregnant word or phrase, and sends it ringing through the ages!

William Mathews

#79. I believe the phrase you're looking for is 'too much money and not enough things to spend it on.

Elle Lothlorien

#80. There is always the danger in scientific work that some word or phrase will be used by different authors to express so many ideas and surmises that, unless redefined, it loses all real significance.

Gilbert N. Lewis

#81. Never be daunted in public' was an early Hemingway phrase that had more than once bolstered me in my timid twenties. I changed it resolutely to 'Never be daunted in private'.
- M.F.K. Fisher A Is for Dining Alone

Jenni Ferrari-Adler

#82. We might even say that the world is always in medias res - a Latin phrase which means "in the midst of things" or "in the middle of a narrative" - and that it is impossible to solve any mystery, or find the root of any trouble,

Lemony Snicket

#83. Perhaps it is a secret yearning of all Hallmark employees to use the phrase 'you big fat pain in the butt' in an anniversary card.

Stephan Pastis

#84. Believe it or not, this simple phrase, "Yes! And . . ." is the secret of improv.

Amy Lisewski

#85. The problem is that "by now" is a phrase we say to ourselves when we're trying to believe the lie that it's too late to start pursuing our dream.

Jon Acuff

#86. It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren't the people the people who made up the phrase "people are people everywhere" had traditionally thought of as people.

Terry Pratchett

#87. Tadark, this phrase is probably meaningless to you as it is so oft repeated, but do be quiet.

Cayla Kluver

#88. In any case, it wouldn't affect the results at all, but that phrase the balance of power always sounds impressive in conversation, as if you'd been reading Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. I

Michel Houellebecq

#89. Begin where you are. Read every word, every phrase, every paragraph of the mind, as it operates through thought.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

#90. So many things are difficult, said Miss Marple. It was a useful phrase which she used often.

Agatha Christie

#91. 'Data exhaust' is probably my least favorite phrase in the big data world 'cause it sounds like something you're trying to get rid of or something noxious that comes out of the back of your car.

Rick Smolan

#92. I have heard my fill of hurtful words. I think it's especially egregious when citizens like me, who point out abuses in their country, are referred to as 'do-gooders.' This is how a phrase that can be used to stop an argument dead becomes part of common usage.

Gunter Grass

#93. My wife simply quoted, 'For better or worse.' It was only then that I realized the phrase was not multiple-choice.

Michael Gurnow

#94. Believe in better, which is a corporate phrase rather than a political phrase. We don't want more. We're not looking for quantity. We're looking for quality. Believe in better suggests intergenerational change. It suggests product innovation. It suggests something better for the future.

Frank Luntz

#95. No, (slightly grandly) it's time that time-turning became a thing of the past. ALBUS: You're quite proud of that phrase, aren't you? SCORPIUS: Been working on it all day.

J.K. Rowling

#96. Here's a phrase that apparently the airlines simply made up: near miss. They say that if 2 planes almost collide, it's a near miss. Bullshit, my friend. It's a near hit! A collision is a near miss.
[WHAM! CRUNCH!]
"Look, they nearly missed!"
"Yes, but not quite.

George Carlin

#97. It's in the history books, the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.

Gene Simmons

#98. I always love that phrase, 'Oh, this is a good idea, but it's execution dependent.' As if anything in life is not execution dependent. Breathing is execution-dependent.

Ted Sarandos

#99. The answer is, of course, to simplify, to prioritize, and in some cases, to use a well-known phrase, "Just say no!" But actually doing it may prove to be one of the real challenges in our complicated, overheated lives.

M. Russell Ballard

#100. There is a phrase in French, which means 'to miss.' To pass by. To not be able to stop. You love someone and someone loves you, but it just can't work for different reasons.

Emmanuelle Beart