Solecism Quotes

#1. That it is a solecism to begin a sentence with 'and' is a faintly lingering superstition. The OED gives examples ranging from the 10th to the 19th c.; the Bible is full of them.

Ernest Gowers

#2. To have entered a strange house, and to have consumed the best part of a cake without the knowledge or consent of the lawful owners, was a solecism worthy of severe retribution.

Jennifer Worth

#3. To purposely concoct older characters of a sunny disposition would be as much of a solecism as deliberately fabricating arrhythmic blacks, spendthrift Jews, slacker Japanese and so on.

Will Self

#4. To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism; had we never sinned we should have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory be celebrated by songs of triumph.

Thomas Carlyle

#5. A government without the power of defense! It is a solecism.

James Q. Wilson

#6. A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.

Thomas Jefferson

#7. When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but in what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.

Louis Sullivan

#8. To believe in luck, if it were not a solecism so to use the word believe, is skepticism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#9. Roger King is, without a doubt, the greatest salesman in the history of anything. And I don't ever limit him just to television. He could sell you anything.

Merv Griffin

#10. It is hard to think of anything which more tragically and clearly exemplifies the phenomenon of good political intentions achieving the precise opposite of their aim.

A. N. Wilson

#11. The United States is excellent at breeding psychopaths - a country where we reward the individual with a hyperfocus on success at any cost. We reward narcissism - with our social networks and hideous reality television programs. We

Lisa Unger

#12. It's better worth being late for a chance of winning you than being in time for any other girl in the world.

Bram Stoker

#13. Aluminum is a metallic element - one of the principal constituents of the earth's crust. Only oxygen and silicon are more abundant. Aluminum does not occur naturally in its pure form, but only in a wide variety of compounds.

George W. Stocking

#14. Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.

Tony Blair

#15. Everything has a beginning, or needs one, and if the beginning's identifiable but not dramatic enough, it needs to be deidentified - located elsewhere.

Joshua Cohen