 Illustration by Herbert E. Clamp from DALLAS MORNING NEWS, Nov. 25, 1900 |
A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes
it plain; a close approximation to it will answer, and much traveling is
done in a well-enough fashion by its help, but we do not welcome it and
applaud it and rejoice in it as we do when the right one blazes out on us.
Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a
newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically
prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of the mouth and
tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry. - "William Dean Howells" |
The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really
a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
- Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888
Words realize nothing, verify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your
own person the thing which the words try to describe.
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
I never write metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for
city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.
- Simplified Spelling speech, 1906
It is always the way; words will answer as long as it is only a person's neighbor
who is in trouble, but when that person gets into trouble himself, it is time
that the King rise up and do something.
- Personal Reflections of Joan of Arc
|
Portrait of Clemens by Gaston Fay |
Words are only painted fire; a look is the
fire itself. - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court You have seen that kind of people who will never let on that they don't
know the meaning of a new big word. The more ignorant they are, the more
pitifully certain they are to pretend you haven't shot over their heads. |
A Rajah is better than a prince because you couldn't mistake what Rajah meant,
and Prince has become so much associated with dogs. I wouldn't mind being a
gay young dog, but I would object most certainly to being considered the household
variety, and as you can't rely on people's judgment, it is better to be plain
about your meanings.
- quoted in Enchantment, Dorothy Quick
We have natural & justifiable distrust of talky men who make a sounding
& ostentatious pretense of saying a thing & yet don’t say it after
all -- men who hide a mustard-seed of an idea in a kaleidoscope of words, so
that the more you turn the thing the more you can’t quite capture that
elusive little idea, because it always takes refuge, just in time, behind a
new & bewitching rainbow-explosion of fine language ...
- letter to unidentified friend, written between 24 – 30 September 1876
The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly
timed pause.
- Mark Twain's Speeches
Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links | Search
