Top 100 Syllable Quotes
#1. Philologists, who chase A painting syllable through time and space Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark, To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's Ark.
William Cowper
#2. He swallowed again and tightened his grip so even if she wanted to leave, she couldn't. It astonished him how difficult it was to find the one word he needed after these exquisite days. The one word he had no right to say.
He forced the forbidden syllable from his tight throat.
Stay.
Anna Campbell
#3. I often think of the space of a page as a stage, with words, letters, syllable characters moving across.
Susan Howe
#4. There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.
Audrey Niffenegger
#5. Stupidity is doomed,
therefore, to cringe
at every syllable
of wisdom.
Heraclitus
#6. Every syllable that can be struck out is pure profit, and every page that can be economised is a five-per-cent dividend. Nature rebels against this rule; the flesh is weak, and shrinks from the scissors; I groan in retrospect over the weak.
Henry Adams
#7. The basic rhymes in English are masculine, which is to say that the last syllable of the line is stressed: 'lane' rhymes with 'pain,' but it also rhymes with 'urbane' since the last syllable of 'urbane' is stressed. 'Lane' does not rhyme with 'methane.'
James Fenton
#8. The real human division is this: the luminous and the shady. To diminish the number of the shady, to augment the number of the luminous, - that is the object. That is why we cry: Education! science! To teach reading, means to light the fire; every syllable spelled out sparkles.
Victor Hugo
#9. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
Henry David Thoreau
#10. What will the last syllable of recorded time be, and who will be the one to write it? No matter how long we live, we still wonder when our world will end and how.
Thea Harrison
#11. In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
#12. A thousand fantasies Begin to throng into my memory, Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire, And airy tongues that syllable men's names On sands and shores and desert wildernesses
John Milton
#13. The Brain is just the weight of God
For
Heft them
Pound for Pound
And they will differ
if they do
As Syllable from Sound
Emily Dickinson
#14. No!" Linus sounds really shocked. Shocked, embarrassed, discomfited. Kind of mortified. Like he can't believe I would say that. (I'm getting all this from one syllable, you understand.)
Sophie Kinsella
#15. I find my voice and manage to say those three one-syllable words back to him. Words I haven't uttered in a very, very long time. Words that meant nothing before now.
Emily Giffin
#16. MONOSYLLABIC, adj. Composed of words of one syllable ... Commonly Saxon - that is to say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapable of any but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.
Ambrose Bierce
#17. If you want to say that a word has a circumflex on its penultimate syllable, without saying flat out that it has a circumflex there, there is a word for it: properispomenon.
Bill Bryson
#18. As Chloe, I can honestly say I've never uttered a syllable of a curse word, not even behind closed doors.
Chloe Grace Moretz
#19. I began a poem in lines of one syllable. It's rather difficult, but the merit of all things lies in their difficulty. The subject matter is gallant. I'll read you the first canto; it's four hundred verses long and takes one minute.
Alexandre Dumas
#20. The one I tell everyone, the one I'm very, very proud of is 'Call Me Irresponsible.' Simply because I want to say and it's not as facetious as it sounds. It has five syllable words in it.
Sammy Cahn
#21. Wyatt Fox. It suited him. Clean, masculine, not a syllable wasted. Like James Bond, if 007 included cowboy-marine-firefighter in his stable of personae.
Fox.
Wyatt Fox. License to thrill - and send your panties plummeting.
Kate Meader
#22. Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men's names.
John Milton
#23. She always called him Luca, in the Italian manner, and said it with that funny trans-European intonation, the accent oddly placed on the first syllable: 'Where's Loo-ka?', just like Audrey Hepburn saying, 'Take the pic-ture,' in Funny Face.
Adam Gopnik
#24. It is important that the audience should understand every syllable of every word, for only then can they grasp the meaning of the song.
Kate Smith
#25. Aaron would never make up anything like that."
"That's because Aaron doesn't say anything that requires words of more than one syllable.
Richelle Mead
#26. Wamblecropt is the most exquisite word in the English language. Say it. Each syllable is intolerably beautiful.
Mark Forsyth
#27. Punk was just a single, venomous one-syllable, two-syllable phrase of anger - which was necessary to reignite rock & roll. But sooner or later, someone was going to want to say more than fuck you.
Greil Marcus
#28. But in love each moment is magnified, and every gesture, word and syllable is examined like a speech by the President.
Hanif Kureishi
#29. She had a hit for every syllable: 'Don't. You. Ever. Talk. To. Me. Like. That. Ever. Again.' That was the last time I ever talked back to Mom.
Misty May-Treanor
#30. My hand lowered slowly to my side. It trembled. "There is no affection," I said, each syllable a measured force of emotion I dared not allow purchase, "that will endure when treated as a thing.
Karina Cooper
#31. I'm from the South, and there's a different understanding of how to chop. There's a syllable play. It's a delicate art. Your accent has a lot to do with it. If you're from a certain area, words don't roll of your tongue as slick.
Yelawolf
#32. I knew my words were harsh, as I enunciated each syllable slowly, but I felt like I had to be clear with him. We'd crossed too many lines that day, and it needed to stop.
Monica Alexander
#33. She spoke Basque, which is a language which rarely makes any impression upon the brains of any other race, so that a man may hear it as often and as long as he likes, but never afterwards be able to recall a single syllable of it.
Susanna Clarke
#34. Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians
lack of power to pronounce the syllable, "No." To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one's freedom and one's character.
Nicolas Chamfort
#35. Ho ho ho, tell me why you are not at home' is something Santa Claus could ask you if you stayed in a hotel over Christmas. It is most certainly not the reason why it is called 'hotel', but it will hopefully help you remember that the stress is actually on the second syllable.
Jakub Marian
#36. You'd be happy to leave him if it weren't for her," Isabelle said, managing to inject the single syllable word with enough venom to poison an elephant.
Cassandra Clare
#37. A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.
Don DeLillo
#38. The Three Oddest Words
When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.
Wislawa Szymborska
#40. It was a question of insurmountable proportions. A single word that held every fear he had ever had-and every wish he had ever made on those cursed stars. She needn't say more. In a single syllable, she had said more than he wanted to hear in an entire lifetime.
V.S. Carnes
#41. 'Ms.' is a syllable which sounds like a bumble bee is breaking wind.
Hortense Calisher
#42. I was learning that the best conversations consisted of keeping quiet and listening, and speaking, when one spoke at all, in words of a single syllable.
Alan Bradley
#43. The relation of repetitions for learning and for repeating English stanzas needs no amplification. These were learned by heart on the first day with less than half of the repetitions necessary for the shortest of the syllable series.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
#44. When you're undead, the emphasis is on the second syllable.
Peter Watts
#45. When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.
Wislawa Szymborska
#46. He also thought that 'abbreviation' was too long for its meaning, that 'monosyllabic' should have one syllable, 'dyslexic' should be renamed 'O' and 'unspeakable' should be respelt 'unsfzpxkable.
Jasper Fforde
#47. I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus, that I never altered one syllable of God's Word against my conscience, nor would do this day, if all that is in earth, whether it be honor, pleasure, or riches, might be given me.
William Tyndale
#48. Is. English. Not. Your. Native. Language?" Grim spoke each word separately, and strung each syllable out.
Nick hated it when he did that.
"Oh, how silly of me," Grim continued. "I forgot Stupid is your native tongue.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#50. One made the observation of the people of Asia that they were all slaves to one man, merely because they could not pronounce that syllable No.
Plutarch
#51. There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.
Annie Dillard
#52. I don't categorize characters into one syllable. These are fully-rounded characters that I don't judge; I just play them.
Kevin Spacey
#53. There's only one way to save you from them today." "Oh?" The single syllable was all she could manage. Had he always been this broad? This tall? Had his eyes always been such a dark, smoky grey? "Come riding with me.
Sarah MacLean
#54. His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn't even know that guys could turn me on-not, like, in real life
John Green
#55. He purred the words, as if his tongue was lazy and had all the time in the world to wrap around each and every syllable. She wondered if his tongue would be so thorough on a woman's body.
Blue Kincaid
#56. Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit.
Damon Galgut
#57. Her voice sounding young and nearly giddy in her ears, she asked, "Are you certain, sir, you ought to kiss a housemaid?" No answering chuckle. "I have never been more certain of anything in my life," he whispered, his breath tickling her upper lip with each syllable.
Julie Klassen
#58. Then let us try teaching you a bit of Romanian," he said. "You have been mispronouncing our name very badly. The emphasis is on the first syllable. Dobrescu," he enunciated for her. The way he pronounced his name made it sound entirely different. Musical, even.
Elizabeth Camden
#59. I believe my mother was smart enough to know that in the night, you are willing to tell all. If she waited until the next day, she knew she'd get one-syllable answers.
H.W. Brands
#60. What are you? (Zarek)
I'm a nymph. (Astrid)
I hope you just left an important syllable off that word, princess. (Zarek)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#62. The aim of the tests carried on with these syllable series was, by means of repeated audible perusal of the separate series, to so impress them that immediately afterward they could voluntarily be reproduced.
Hermann Ebbinghaus
#63. The leaves hop, scraping on the ground. It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice. It is in this solitude, a syllable, Out of these gawky flitterings, Intones its single emptiness, The savagest hollow of winter-sound.
Wallace Stevens
#64. How many quarrels, and how important, has the doubt as to the meaning of this syllable "Hoc" produced for the world!
Michel De Montaigne
#65. There are codes so subtle that they change their whole meaning in half a line, or in a syllable, or in a pause, a caesura.
Hilary Mantel
#66. I guess I'm the perfect match, then, for a girl who likes to visit a cemetery." He drew out every syllable so that it sounded like a love song.
I closed my eyes, savoring those words. "A perfect match," I murmured. "My other half.
Jessica Verday
#67. I sympathize with politicians who have to watch every syllable they utter for fear it will be misused by somebody with an agenda.
Richard Dawkins
#68. Oberon Did Middle English hounds bark with an extra syllable on the end? like 'woofe'?
Kevin Hearne
#69. With network shows, writers can be so protective of every syllable.
Michael Shanks
#70. Now remember, Kate." Barabas leaned over to me, grinning. "You are the Consort. Be the Consort." He stretched "be" into a three-syllable word. "Think like a-"
"Open the door or I'll punch you right in the face," I growled.
Ilona Andrews
#71. She laughed. There should be a word for a laugh that ends as soon as it starts. A laugh that's more a syllable of surprise and acknowledgment than it is anything else.
Rainbow Rowell
#72. To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
William Shakespeare
#73. To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
Victor Hugo
#74. A man may sooner engrave the chronicle of a whole nation, or all the records of God in the Scripture upon the hardest marble with his bare finger, than write one syllable of the law of God in a spiritual manner upon his heart.
William Symington
#75. I tried to make sense of the Four Books,
until love arrived,
and it all became a single syllable.
Yunus Emre
#76. He's a man who measures words as if he had only a few given to him by Fate; too generous a syllable from his lips, and he might fall over dead.
Jeff VanderMeer
#77. My laboratory,' I said, experimentally, drawing out each syllable. 'Why is it that saying it like that always makes me want to follow it with 'mwoo-hah-hah-hahhhhh'? '
'You were overexposed to Hammer Films as a child?'
- Harry Dresden & Bob the Skull, Changes, Jim Butcher
Jim Butcher
#78. How can love's spaciousness
be conveyed in the narrow
confines of one syllable?
Diane Ackerman
#79. I don't mean to be rude - " he began, in a tone that threatened rudeness in every syllable.
"Yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often," Dumbledore finished the sentence gravely.
J.K. Rowling
#80. For, whom the Muses smile upon,
And touch with soft persuasion,
His words like a storm-wind can bring
Terror and beauty on their wing;
In his every syllable
Lurketh nature veritable.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#81. He turned away from me, the better to hide the exclamation of annoyance which he muttered under his breath; I caught only what seemed to be the syllable cog (perhaps a reference to my mechanical trade) and the word succour (a prayer for divine assistance?).
K.W. Jeter
#82. Books, as Dryden has aptly termed them, are spectacles to read nature. Aeschylus and Aristotle, Shakespeare and Bacon, are priests who preach and expound the mysteries of man and the universe. They teach us to understand and feel what we see, to decipher and syllable the hieroglyphics of the senses.
Augustus William Hare
#83. I write in terror ... I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence, sometimes every syllable.
Cynthia Ozick
#84. This is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word.
T. S. Eliot
#85. The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories.
P.L. Travers
#86. Utterance
Sitting over words
Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
Not far
Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
The echo of everything that has ever
Been spoken
Still spinning its one syllable
Between the earth and silence
W.S. Merwin
#88. Line by Line, Word by Word, Syllable by Syllable!
Carl McKever
#89. Each movement was a syllable leading to a greater meaning.
Lisa Kleypas
#90. Still it tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow again writhes in this petty pace from day to day until the last syllable of the recorded time
William Shakespeare
#91. Oh.' A syllable can express a great deal. Will's sounded of resignation but also of swear words, and the smell of rotting vegetation, and wary amusement and bitten fingernails.
Katherine Rundell
#92. One single syllable of intimacy and the world is put to rights.
John Boyne
#93. In many traditions, the world was sung into being: Aboriginal Australians believe their ancestors did so. In Hindu and Buddhist thought, Om was the seed syllable that created the world.
Jay Griffiths
#94. Proper praying is like a person who wanders through a field gathering flowers-one by one, until they make a beautiful bouquet. In the same manner, a person must gather each letter, each syllable, to form them into words of prayer.
Nachman Of Breslov
#95. Be cautious not to utter a syllable! Step not out of the circle, and as you love yourself, dare not to look upon my face!
Matthew Gregory Lewis
#96. It was always leading up to this wasn't it?" Shobu asked.
His opponent enunciated each syllable "You have no idea.
Shinry
#97. You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.
Lois McMaster Bujold
#98. Most people in America want an easy read. I call it McFiction - books which pass right through you without you even digesting them. I don't mean a book that has two-syllable words. I mean chapters you can read in a toilet break. Happy endings. We are more of a TV culture.
Jodi Picoult
#99. Bitch," Bliss hissed crossing her arms in front of her chest.
Lea laughed louder, "Oh, one syllable word war. You don't even need a brain to play that game! Okay, my turn! Cunt!
Christine Zolendz
#100. From the body of the unborn essence arises the sphere of light, and from that sphere of light arises wisdom. From the wisdom arises the seed syllable and from the seed syllable arises the complete Mandala, the deity and the retinue.
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
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