Fitfully In A Sentence Quotes

In conscious life, we achieve some sense of ourselves as reasonably unified, coherent selves, and without this action would be impossible. But all this is merely at the 'imaginary' level of the ego, which is no more than the tip of the iceberg of the human subject known to psychoanalysis. The ego is function or effect of a subject which is always dispersed, never identical with itself, strung out along the chains of the discourses which constitute it. There is a radical split between these two levels of being - a gap most dramatically exemplified by the act of referring to myself in a sentence. When I say 'Tomorrow I will mow the lawn,' the 'I' which I pronounce is an immediately intelligible, fairly stable point of reference which belies the murky depths of the 'I' which does the pronouncing. The former 'I' is known to linguistic theory as the 'subject of the enunciation', the topic designated by my sentence; the latter 'I', the one who speaks the sentence, is the 'subject of the enunciating', the subject of the actual act of speaking. In the process of speaking and writing, these two 'I's' seem to achieve a rough sort of unity; but this unity is of an imaginary kind. The 'subject of the enunciating', the actual speaking, writing human person, can never represent himself or herself fully in what is said: there is no sign which will, so to speak, sum up my entire being. I can only designate myself in language by a convenient pronoun. The pronoun 'I' stands in for the ever-e ~ Terry Eagleton

Buonaparte is certainly writing, or rather dictating, his memoirs. He walks backwards and forwards with his hands behind him, and dictates so fast that two or three of his suite are obliged to be in attendance, that the one may take down one-half of a sentence, and another the rest; they then literally compare notes, and put the disjointed legs and wings and heads of periods together. This is writing a book as he fought a battle. ~ Mary Russell Mitford

I've been accused of not really paying attention to a sentence unless my name comes up in it twice. ~ Matthew Perry

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

As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment, there is a purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come. From this sentence, we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come. ~ Francis Of Assisi

To hurry through the rise and fall of a fine, full sentence is like defying the role of time in human life. ~ Kenneth Clark

You need a very, exceptionally clear vision. And to me, a vision is something that you can say in one sentence. The fewer the words the better. ~ Ron Johnson

GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him -
Tell him the page I did n't write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried, 5
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.

"Tell him it was n't a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled; 10
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
Tell him - No, you may quibble there,
For it would split his heart to know it, 15
And then you and I were silenter.

"Tell him night finished before we finished,
And the old clock kept neighing 'day!'
And you got sleepy and begged to be ended -
What could it hinder so, to say? 20
Tell him just how she sealed you, cautious,
But if he ask where you are hid
Until to-morrow, - happy letter!
Gesture, coquette, and shake your head! ~ Emily Dickinson

Every writer is necessarily a critic - that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg - nine-tenths of him is under water. ~ Thornton Wilder

Before Amy and I got serious, got engaged, got married, I would get glimpses of Go's thoughts in a sentence here or there. It's funny, I can't quite get a bead on her, like who she really is. And: You just seem kind of not yourself with her. And: There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her. And finally: The important thing is she makes you really happy. Back ~ Gillian Flynn

I don't understand how teens in this generation stress being in a relationship/love more than adults do about their future. She's testing him to see if he's loyal, he's testing her to see if she's after money. So, basically it's a messed up-stressed-testing generation. Love has been blown so far out of proportion I reckon. The stress surrounding the single sentence 'I love you' is saddening. Relax!!! You're young! Your teen years are supposed to be fun. You have your whole lives ahead to find the right one. Just sit back, chill and live life the way it comes. ~ Manasa Rao

Socrates is a shining example of a man who bravely lived up to his ideals, and, in the end, bravely died for them. Throughout his life, he never lost faith in the mind's ability to discern and decide, and so to apprehend and master reality. Nor did he ever betray truth and integrity for a pitiable life of self-deception and semi-consciousness. In seeking relentlessly to align mind with matter and thought with fact, he remained faithful both to himself and to the world, with the result that he is still alive in this sentence and millions of others that have been written about him. More than a great philosopher, Socrates was the living embodiment of the dream that philosophy might one day set us free. ~ Neel Burton

I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache an about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. ~ C.S. Lewis

There is nothing so banal in the world,' said Ada 'than pitching stones at a hawfinch. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

America is a grateful nation. We cannot allow anything or anyone to get in the way of that. The words 'veteran' and 'backlog' should never appear in the same sentence. ~ Jackie Walorski

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

After years spent in Washington, I have become more aware than ever of the government's ineptness and the likelihood of its making mistakes. I no longer trust the U.S. government to invoke and carry out a death sentence under any conditions. ~ Ron Paul

The door was flung open. Maurice Duplay filled it; energetic master, shirt- sleeves rolled up. He threw out his arms, the good Jacobin Duplay, and formed a sentence totally original, something which had never been uttered in the history of the world: Camille, you have a son, and your wife is very well, and is asking you to be at home, right now. ~ Hilary Mantel

Bodisham insisted upon a series of conferences with practically all the Group present and participating. The egg of the world revolution was indeed incubated in meetings very like tutorial classes. Our dramatic and romantic dispositions would have it otherwise, but that was the course reality chose to take. It was begotten of a sentence, it was fostered in talk. In the beginning was the Word. There is no strong, silent man in the history of the world renascence.

"I've got so little to say," said Dreed, and he was the nearest approach to speechlessness in the Group.

"All the more reason for coming to listen," said Rud.

They had to understand each other, Bodisham urged, and to keep on understanding each other. "You have to talk a movement into being," he said, "and you have to keep it alert by talk. You have to write and keep on writing memoranda on the different expressions of our fundamental ideas, as fact challenges them. It is laborious but absolutely
necessary."

So long as Lenin lived, Bodisham argued, he wrote and talked and explained, and when he died progress in Russia turned its face to the wall. The hope went out of the Russian experiment. "You have to play the role of Lenin in our movement," said Bodisham. The Common-sense Party had to keep alive mentally even if it risked serious internal conflicts. Rigidity was a sign of death. Fixed creeds were the coffins of belief. ~ H.G. Wells

People write or speak sentences in order to produce an effect, and the success of a sentence is measured by the degree to which the desired effect has been achieved. ~ Stanley Fish

My story ended where so many stories have ended since the Rising: with a man - in this case, my adoptive brother and best friend, Shaun - holding a gun to the base of my skull as the virus in my blood betrayed me, transforming me from a thinking human being into something better suited to a horror movie. ~ Mira Grant

In the beginning, nearly fourteen billion years ago, all the space and all the matter and all the energy of the known universe was contained in a volume less than one-trillionth the size of the period that ends this sentence. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Grant me, O Lord, to know that which ought to be known; to love that which ought to be loved; to praise that which pleaseth Thee most, to esteem that which is precious in Thy sight, to blame that which is vile in Thine eyes. Suffer me not to judge according to the sight of bodily eyes, nor to give sentence according to the hearing of the ears of ignorant men; but to discern in true judgment between visible and spiritual things, and above all things to be ever seeking after the will of Thy good pleasure. 8. ~ Thomas A Kempis

In Truth," I said, "there are no rules other than you have to tell the truth."
"How do you win?" he asked.
"That," I said, "is such a boy question."
"What, girls don't like to win?" He snorted. "Please. You're the one who got all rule driven on me claiming Instant Breakfast isn't a food."
"It's not," I told him. "It's a beverage."
He rolled his eyes. I can't believe this, I thought. A week or two ago putting a full sentence together in front of Wes was a challenge. Now we were arguing about liquids.
"Okay," he said, "back to Truth. You were saying?"
I took in a breath. "To win, one person has to refuse to answer a question," I said. "So, for example, let's say I ask you a question and you don't answer it. Then you get to ask me a question, and if I answer it, I win."
"But that's too simple," he said. "What if I ask you something easy?"
"You wouldn't," I told him. "It has to be a really hard question, because you don't want me to win."
"Ahhh," he said, nodding. Then, after mulling it for a second he said, "Man. This is diabolical."
"It's a girl's game," I explained, tilting my head back and looking at the stars. "Always good for a little drama at the slumber party. I told you, you don't want to play."
"No. I do," he squared his shoulders. "I can handle it. ~ Sarah Dessen

'TIME's spell-check always admonishes me whenever I compose a sentence in the passive voice, a warning that is often ignored by me. ~ Richard Corliss

There would always be an expletive in a New York sentence. Even from a judge. Soderberg was not fond of bad language, but he knew its value at the right time. A man on a tightrope, a hundred and ten stories in the air, can you possibly fucking believe it? ~ Colum McCann

I can't compose or play music; I'm not that fortunate. But I can write and I can talk and sometimes when I'm doing either of these things I realize that I've written a sentence or uttered a thought that I didn't absolutely know I had in me ... until I saw it on the page or heard myself say it. ~ Christopher Hitchens

As a psycholinguist who once wrote an entire book on the past tense, I can single out my favorite example in the history of the English language. It comes from the first sentence of a Wikipedia entry:

Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor.

Yes, "smallpox was. ~ Steven Pinker

I('m the woman who) always forgot where she was-in a state, in a sentence. ~ Heather McHugh

Mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic language enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars. ~ Mark Twain

He was so excited by this little bit of intelligence that he might have gone off, perplexed, pondering for a long time. It was like reading a wonderful sentence in a book, and not being able to continue because so many possibilities were crowding his mind. ~ Anne Rice

Words... are the wildest, freest, most irresponsible, most unteachable of all things. Of course, you can catch them and sort them and place them in alphabetical order in dictionaries. But words do not live in dictionaries; they live in the mind....Thus to lay down any laws for such irreclaimable vagabonds is worse than useless. A few trifling rules of grammar and spelling are all the constraint we can put on them. All we can say about them, as we peer at them over the edge of that deep, dark and only fitfully illuminated cavern in which they live - the mind - all we can say about them is that they seem to like people to think and to feel before they use them, but to think and to feel not about them, but about something different. They are highly sensitive, easily made self-conscious. They do not like to have their purity or their impurity discussed......Nor do they like being lifted out on the point of a pen and examined separately. They hang together, in sentences, in paragraphs, sometimes for whole pages at a time. They hate being useful; they hate making money; they hate being lectured about in public. In short, they hate anything that stamps them with one meaning or confines them to one attitude, for it is their nature to change. ~ Virginia Woolf

A man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff of the candle; and this, I say, is considerable, and not a little matter, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish conclusion to the contrary from our own superannuated desires or forgetful indifference is about as reasonable as to say, a man never was young because he has grown old, or never lived because he is now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judged of from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two - not our exit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think while there - that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it. ~ William Hazlitt

You realize you are turning me into some kind of machine?" he noted, nodding down at his HiThere poking through the towel. Simon took the time to place his zucchini bread safely on the coffee table."How cute is that? It's like he's poking his head out from behind a curtain!" I clapped my hands."You may not be aware, but as a general rule, no man likes the word cute in the same sentence as his junk. ~ Alice Clayton

I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once. ~ John Coltrane

I've always been a fast reader. Now I had to do it slowly, discussing each sentence. And every time I wanted to change something I had to come up with an intelligent defense I could be pretty sure that they would turn my suggestion down, as they had so many aspects to keep in mind. However, if I argued well, I could have a chance. I had to think of every comma, every word. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

A preposition is a word that shows a relationship between its object and another word in the sentence. Examples: By grace are ye saved through faith. (Ephesians 2:8a) These two prepositions introduce phrases that tell us how individuals are saved: By grace and through faith. Both prepositional phrases are used as adverbs because they modify the verb are saved. ~ Shirley M. Forsen

I have said with as much sincerity as I can muster that if I were thrown into a dungeon with a sentence of one hundred years, with my only company being an illiterate guard who came twice a day with meals but who never spoke, I would still write - on coarse toilet paper in the dark if I could spare it. ~ Edward P. Jones

You know the story." The Nalnom rotated his hand in the air as if she should recall it.

"I don't. I've never heard the story."

Joshlon summarized it for her. "Prometheus was turned into a dragon by his angry lover, Naradite. She refused to turn him back into his manly form. He became the first fire-breathing dragon - Naga the Terrible."

Eena dropped her lower jaw. "What?"

"Naradite turned Prometheus into a dragon," Joshlon repeated. "Naga."

"And Prometheus is Edgar's father?" She was sure the surrounding stares were the result of her virtually shouting out the question.

Joshlon answered with some hesitance in his voice. "I don't know who Edgar is, but Edgarmetheus was supposedly the son of Prometheus, the illegitimate child of him and his lover, Naradite."

"Oh. My. Gosh!" Eena exclaimed. "Naga is Edgar's father!"

Joshlon's lip curled. He didn't look like he was following her emotional outburst. "Sha Eena, are you trying to tell me that this is all for real? And Naga is the undefeatable enemy you're fighting?"

Her hazel eyes focused on him instantly. "Oh, no, no, not Naga! Out of all the immortals, he's the nice one!"

Joshlon looked confused. "Naga the Terrible is the nice one?"

"Yes," Eena nodded assuredly. "Edgar is the…" She halted mid-sentence. Joshlon had stopped moving. In fact, all the surrounding Nalnoms were frozen in place, skeptical expressions st ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

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

A perception of empire is found in an early Christian acrostic. An acrostic is a word made up of the first letters of each word in a phrase or sentence. In this case, the phrase is an early Christian saying in Latin: radix omnium malorum avaritia. Radix means "root," omnium means "all," malorum means "evil," and avaritia means "avarice" (or "greed"). Putting it together, it says, "Avarice (or greed) is the root of all evil." And the first letters of each word produce Roma, the Latin spelling of Rome. It makes a striking point: Roma - empire - is the embodiment of avarice, the incarnation of greed. That's what empire is about. The embodiment of greed in domination systems is the root of all evil. ~ Marcus J. Borg