Top 100 The Sentence Quotes
#1. It is not easy to stand at the bar of public opinion and receive the verdict of condemnation; but what will it be to stand at the bar of God who is greater than all, and to receive from him the sentence of damnation.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#3. I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence. You can see for yourself how many different ways they might be arranged.
James Joyce
#4. She was certain that the Vicario brothers were not as eager to carry out the sentence as to find someone who would do them the favor of stopping them.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#5. John!" cried Lady Greystoke, running toward him, "how could I have been mistaken? I-" but the rest of the sentence was lost as Tarzan of the Apes sprang into the room and taking his mate in his arms covered her lips with kisses.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#6. Remember that death is the punctuation at the end of the sentence. It's up to us to decide what kind of punctuation it will be - a period or an exclamation point.
Richard Paul Evans
#7. The sentence, having fumbled to a petering end, she too left.
Iain McKinnon
#8. Abbe Faria: Here is your final lesson - do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence. God said, Vengeance is mine.
Edmond Dantes: I don't believe in God.
Abbe Faria: It doesn't matter. He believes in you.
Alexandre Dumas
#9. The Sentence has no end. Sometimes I think it had no beginning. Now I salute its authors, which means all of us. You have made a wild, precious, awful, delicious, lovable, tragic, vulgar, fearsome, divine thing.
Douglas Davis
#10. She sucked in a breath. "You're ... "
When she didn't finish the sentence, he turned his head and watched her gaze drop to his mouth, which was only a few inches from hers.
"Handy," she finished softly.
"And you're ... "
She smiled. "Stubborn? Annoying?"
"Set to go," he said.
Jill Shalvis
#11. Oh, my. The Marques of Jonesborough requests that I join him for a ride in his phaeton this afternoon; only he fears my beauty will blind his horses." The end of the sentence was swallowed by Alex's own disbelieving giggle. "Surely he can't think I would take that seriously.
Sarah MacLean
#12. You know, a man always judges himself by the balance he can strike between the needs of his body and the demands of his mind. You're judging yourself now, Mersaut, and you don't like the sentence.
Albert Camus
#13. If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.
John Banville
#15. Her face was as red as her hair. "What are you doing," she cried.
Devon put a question mark next to the sentence. "Editing your paper." What did it look like he was doing?
"You're just cutting out stuff!"
"What do you think editing is?
M.M. John
#16. A semicolon is where a writer can choose to end the sentence," she said, tucking a lock of brown hair behind her ear. "But they don't. The story goes on. It's a symbol of hope. To keep going." She smiled tremulously. "Sometimes I need that reminder.
Emma Scott
#17. He said, looking down at her body, "Dagny, what a magnificent waste!"
She had to turn and escape. She felt herself blushing, for the first time in years: blushing because she knew suddenly that the sentence named what she had felt all evening.
Ayn Rand
#18. What makes a person hate themselves?"
"Cowardice, perhaps. Or the eternal fear of being wrong, of not doing what others expect. A few moments ago I was happy, I forgot I was under the sentence of death; then when I remembered the situation I'm in, I felt frightened.
Paulo Coelho
#19. The sentence that best expresses a snail's way of life: 'The right thing to do is to do nothing, the place to do it is in a place of concealment and the time to do it is as often as possible.
Elisabeth Tova Bailey
#20. Just start the sentence ... and see what happens. This is how we write.
Jincy Willett
#21. When you translate poetry in particular, you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words, sentences, phrases, the triple tension between the line of verse, the syntax and the sentence.
Marilyn Hacker
#22. but that coldness stopped up the sentence in my mouth. "What
Zadie Smith
#23. Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.
Lionel Trilling
#24. He who sees his heir in his own child, carries his eye over hopes and possessions lying far beyond his gravestone, viewing his life, even here, as a period but closed with a comma. He who sees his heir in another man's child sees the full stop at the end of the sentence.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
#25. What mattered to Abu was the music of the sentence. 'A shadow does not belong to the object that casts it.' To Abu, it was a little poem. And in general, it was the poetics, the music of things that tossed his confetti.
Tom Robbins
#26. There's one problem with California." I wasn't eager to listen, but the sentence had a promising beginning. "It has no understanding of evil.
Pico Iyer
#27. What!" said Bois-Guilbert, "so soon?" "Ay," replied the preceptor, "trial moves rapidly on when the judge has determined the sentence beforehand.
Walter Scott
#28. The sentence of the first murderer was pronounced by the Supreme Judge of the universe. Was it death? No, it was life. 'A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth'; and 'Whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#29. He loved words, and he would admit that he was playing with them all the time. He was obsessive about the rhythm of the sentence, and would add a word, subtract a word. [about Truman Capote]
Deborah Kerr
#30. I like bringing poetry's focus on figurative language and compression into the essay. Of course, the musical properties of language, the cadence of the sentence, are really important to me in prose.
Alison Hawthorne Deming
#31. The sentence is the great invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing. I couldn't ask for anything better. It's as near to godliness as I can get.
John Banville
#32. He means the Word: the sentence that, when uttered, would destroy the mind of the listener.
Ted Chiang
#33. Two dots an inch apart, as small and tidy as punctuation marks at the end of a sentence none of us could read. The sentence would have started somewhere just above her heart.
Barbara Kingsolver
#34. The errors could have been avoided by mentally moving the who or whom back into the gap and sounding out the sentence (or, if your intuitions about who and whom are squishy, inserting he or him in the gap instead).
Steven Pinker
#35. The sentence completes its signification only with its last term.
Jacques Lacan
#36. You tell yourself it would be best for her to die. You tell yourself that if now, at this hour of the night, she died, it would be easier. For you, you probably mean, but you don't finish the sentence.
Marguerite Duras
#38. The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.
John Banville
#39. I have a hard time revising sentences, because I spend an inordinate amount of time on each sentence, and the sentence before it, and the sentence after it.
Chang-rae Lee
#40. You're so scared of things sometimes, and for no reason," Sloane said, her voice quieter. "And sometimes, I wish ... " She didn't finish the sentence, just let it hang in the car between us.
I wished it too - whatever it was that in that moment Sloane wanted me to be, that I was falling short of.
Morgan Matson
#41. The decision of such judges as Claudius and his Senate is worth very little in the question of a man's innocence or guilt; but the sentence was that Seneca should be banished to the island of Corsica.
Frederic William Farrar
#42. I once asked him what came at the end of the sentence ... and he said "parole".
Bobby Heenan
#43. However, those who have used those words use half the sentence to fit their purpose, which, of course, I believe is to discredit me and the new Nation of Islam that has come up around me.
Louis Farrakhan
#44. Any open net was an unforgivable crime meriting immediate punishment, and [Di Stefano] carried out the sentence by stabbing at it like a mischievous elf.
Eduardo Galeano
#45. The unit of the poet is the word, the unit of the prose writer is the sentence.
Susan Sontag
#46. I find I can write for two lines, and then I have nothing else to say. For me, the only way to find something comes through the sentence level and sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there's something more to say.
Aimee Bender
#47. In dialogue, make sure that your attributives do not awkwardly interrupt a spoken sentence. Place them where the breath would come naturally in speech-that is, where the speaker would pause for emphasis, or take a breath. The best test for locating an attributive is to speak the sentence aloud.
E.B. White
#48. One of the things that should go into the writer's notebook is a set of experiments with the sentence. A convenient and challenging place to begin is with the long sentence, one that runs to at least two pages.
John Gardner
#49. A good procrastination should feel like you're inserting lots and lots of commas into the sentence of your life.
Ze Frank
#50. [Louis] Brandeis improves the prose. He simplifies it and perfects the balance of the sentence so it becomes even more memorable and aphoristic.
Jeffrey Rosen
#51. Doing a thing by law, or according to law, is only carrying the law into execution. And punishing a man by, or according to, the sentence or judgment of his peers, is only carrying that sentence or judgment into execution.
Lysander Spooner
#52. an exception: in the sentence I asked him what he thought of my review in his book, and his response was unprintable, the word unprintable means something much more specific than "incapable of being printed.") The
Steven Pinker
#53. I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
James Thurber
#54. The thing is to sift out
the important sounds, little syllables and vowels that bring
hints of their lost words, and not to mistake the fossil for
the life, or the kiss for the love, not to mistake the fragment
for the sentence.
Richard Jackson
#55. There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for.
Vladimir Nabokov
#56. Often I listen to songs on repeat for days and days at a time. There's something hypnotic or meditative, and it mirrors the way that I am putting the sentence together, going back over the same phrases again and again.
Eleanor Catton
#57. The energy is important. It's the rebirth of the character. Even more than the sentence itself, it's the energy that has to come through. It's really 'Thank you!
Jean Dujardin
#58. 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
#59. I decided that I wanted to say to Sin-Jun, I like your skirt. But sometimes speaking is so hard! It's like standing still, then sprinting. I kept rehearsing the sentence in my head, examining it for flaws.
Curtis Sittenfeld
#60. The sentence 'snow is white' is true if, and only if, snow is white.
Alfred Tarski
#61. So it's not a thing that's a struggle. It's work, but it's not a struggle. It's fun. And she had a very particular way of emphasizing points and making her point, and that had to do with bringing out a word that you didn't normally think was the most important word in the sentence.
Meryl Streep
#62. The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.
Malcolm Gladwell
#63. Salman Rushdie, indeed any writer who abuses the prophet or indeed any prophet under Islamic law, the sentence for that is actually death.
Cat Stevens
#64. You may pronounce the sentence upon me, honourable judge, but let the world know that in A.D. 1886, in the State of Illinois, eight men were sentenced to death because they believed in a better future; because they had not lost their faith in the ultimate victory of liberty and justice!
August Spies
#65. The longer and the deeper the thought, the shorter the sentence of wisdom will be.
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#66. I failed the test. He's right. It wasn't justice. Justice is dispassionate; it is fair. I am the leader. I passed the sentence. I should have done it. Instead, I gave license to vengeance and vendetta. The cancer will not be cut away; I made it worse.
Pierce Brown
#67. One truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language.
Don DeLillo
#68. You know, in the sentence of humanity this place needs to be a parentheses. And when I say parentheses I mean I'm talking like you go around it. Leave it alone. Let it exist. And what I want people to see with this film is not only a respect for this place from the bottom of my heart.
DJ Spooky
#69. The way you live your day is a sentence in the story of your life. Each day you make the choice whether the sentence ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation point.
Steve Maraboli
#70. Nothing," I said. "I'm just ... " I couldn't finish the sentence, didn't know how to. "I'm just very, very fond of you.
John Green
#71. I'm sorry. I shouldn't be asking such things ... ' She let the sentence die its own death
Markus Zusak
#72. What my true addiction is is reading. I love to read. If I'd get too loaded, I couldn't remember the sentence I just read.
Linda Ronstadt
#73. Pick your words carefully as it has the power to make the sentence beautiful or ugly ...
Adil Adam Memon
#74. Dying was misery. Death was that period at the end of the sentence.
Holly Hood
#75. German wasn't good for conversation because you had to wait to the end of the sentence for the verb, and so couldn't interrupt.
Jeffrey Eugenides
#76. What the devil to do with the sentence "Who the devil does he think he's fooling?" You can't write "Whom the devil- ".
Paul Goodman
#77. The most profound sentence ever written, Temple said with enthusiasm, is the sentence at the end of the zoology. Reproduction is the beginning of death.
James Joyce
#78. In the sentence "She's no longer suffering," to what, to whom does "she" refer? What does that present tense mean?
Roland Barthes
#79. That would be a glorious life, to addict oneself to perfection; to follow the curve of the sentence wherever it might lead, into deserts, under drifts of sand, regardless of lures, of seductions; to be poor always and unkempt; to be ridiculous in Piccadilly.
Virginia Woolf
#80. The sentence imposed on Abdul Kadir sends a powerful and clear message. We will bring to justice those who plot to attack the United States of America.
Loretta Lynch
#81. When you say: The simple truth is this, and then you pause, and then you finish the sentence, people stop, and they think specifically about what you're saying. And it's, in essence, trying to boil it down to something that's very understandable and meaningful.
Frank Luntz
#82. Instead of finishing the sentence she slid a business card across the counter. It listed her contact information for every social media site I'd heard of, and several that were still in beta. Except for Google Plus. Even Internet-addicted fairies have standards.
Alex Shvartsman
#83. The minute a phrase, becomes current, it becomes an apology for not thinking accurately to the end of the sentence.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#84. You can't bribe me with pie." Before he'd finished the sentence, his stomach grumbled loudly in a plea for the pie.
The men grinned.
"We all know you're a pie ho," Mr. Elroy said.
Jill Shalvis
#85. One day, maybe not in the next few weeks, but certainly in the conceivable future, someone will be able to refer to me without using the word 'arse' somewhere in the sentence.
Nick Hornby
#86. I am in favour of capital punishment if the execution of the sentence is immediate. The purpose of the death penalty is to send out a message to society.
Ujjwal Nikam
#87. I think you're so busy reading between the lines, you're missing the sentence on the page.
Lindsay J. Pryor
#88. Doubt everything at least once, even the sentence "Two times two is four."
Georg C. Lichtenberg
#89. Kiernan leans forward. "I'm guessing that's because you can make it work, Mr. Houdini. Maybe that's how you manage . . ." He pauses when my kick lands on his shin, but finishes the sentence anyway. ". . . some of your more elaborate escapes.
Rysa Walker
#90. The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.
George R R Martin
#91. Surely few if any readers have come across the sentence they are now reading, and someone who had by chance heard or seen it could not possibly remember such a fact.
Noam Chomsky
#92. I like to think of the individual words, then you put the word in the sentence, then you have to think about what that word means in the sentence, then you have to read the sentence in the paragraph - you're sort of building up like that; that's my philosophy.
Ann Goldstein
#93. Stupidity cannot be cured. Stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death. There is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
Robert A. Heinlein
#94. Desperate, lonely, cut off from the human community which in many cases has ceased to exist, under the sentence of violent death, wracked by desires for intimacy they do not know how to fulfil, at the same time tormented by the presence of women, men turn to logic.
Andrea Nye
#95. I saw how the forms of love might be maintained with a condemned person but with the love in fact measured and disciplined, because you have to survive. It could be done so discreetly that the object of such care would not suspect, any more than she would suspect the sentence of death itself.
Alice Munro
#96. The sentence pulsates, moves in and out, toward the character and away from her - when we reach "huddled" we are reminded that an author allowed us to merge with his character, that the author's magniloquent style is the envelope within which this generous contract is carried.
James Wood
#97. But she couldn't formulate the sentence in Chinese. Her knowledge of the language only extended to the daily necessities and small affections.
Jade Chang
#98. What you feel when you're writing is the relief of thinking: if you write the sentence correctly, you're clarifying. If you write the right sentence, nothing feels as good.
Vivian Gornick
#99. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of fabric is governed by gravity.
Marianne Moore
#100. The scholar may be sure that he writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort, without a corresponding energy of the body.
Henry David Thoreau
