Linguistic Skill Quotes

You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words. ~ Ngaio Marsh

To Harry James Potter,'" he read, and Harry's insides contracted with a sudden excitement, "'I leave the Snitch he caught in his first Quidditch match at Hogwarts, as a reminder of the rewards of perseverance and skill.'"
As Scrimgeour pulled out the tiny, walnut-sized golden ball, its silver wings fluttered rather feebly, and Harry could not help feeling a definite sense of anticlimax.
"Why did Dumbledore leave you this Snitch?" asked Scrimgeour.
"No idea," said Harry. "For the reasons you just read out, I supposed . . . to remind me what you can get if you . . . persevere and whatever it was."
"You think this a mere symbolic keepsake, then?"
"I suppose so," said Harry. "What else could it be?"
"I'm asking the questions," said Scrimgeour, shifting his chair a little closer to the sofa. Dusk was really falling outside now; the marquee beyond the windows towered ghostly white over the hedge.
"I notice that your birthday cake is in the shape of a Snitch," Scrimgeour said to Harry. "Why is that?"
Hermione laughed derisively.
"Oh, it can't be a reference to the fact Harry's a great Seeker, that's way too obvious," she said. "There must be a secret message from Dumbledore hidden in the icing!"
"I don't think there's anything hidden in the icing," said Scrimgeour, "but a Snitch would be a very good hiding place for a small object. You know why, I'm sure?"
Harry shrugged. Hermione, however, answered: Harry thought that answering ~ J.K. Rowling

Between the amateur and the professional ... there is a difference not only in degree but in kind. The skillful man is, within the function of his skill, a different psychological organization ... A tennis player or a watchmaker or an airplane pilot is an automatism but he is also criticism and wisdom. ~ Bernard DeVoto

Every child is born not only with a stomach that has to be catered to, it is also endowed with two hands which can work and produce the food for the stomach. The hands have to be given the strength and skill; they have to learn the lesson of self-reliance. They should never be lazy or slothful. Then, there can be no deficiency in food and no problem of underfeeding. ~ Sathya Sai Baba

Painting requires skill. Photography is created by the camera, and one cannot fully control what the camera sees. So people take many photographs because several must always be discarded. ~ Igor Babailov

Charlotte had not been the eldest of a large family without acquiring some skill in the management of male delinquencies and her method with her husband was ingenious. She consistently congratulated him on qualities that he did not possess in the hope that, flattered by her praise and approval, he would acquire them. ~ P.D. James

A man is the prisoner of his power. A topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, disputant; skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches success. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know you have trust issues. I understand that. I can only repeat what I said to you this morning, which is you must listen to your heart. It's an acquired skill, Grace, but a very valuable one. Deep down inside of you, you know with whom to place your trust and, more importantly, with whom to place your heart. ~ Lisa C. Temple

One of these laws is simply: nature loves change. Seasons change. The weather changes. Animals are born, they mature, they die. And so it is with our lives - they unfold as a series of changes. It is only the voice of fear within us that causes us to resist and run from change. The truth is that all change is good. It causes us to grow and evolve. And it introduces us to who we truly are. When you learn (and it is a learned skill) to love change and dance in the uncertainty of life, you open yourself up to possibility and your best days. 2. ~ Robin S. Sharma

habit as the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire. ~ Stephen R. Covey

Money is the great tool through whose means labor and skill become universally co-operative. ~ Leland Stanford

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs. ~ Immanuel Kant

What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline.
Discipline is hard
harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can't even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at. ~ Atul Gawande

Instructors should not only be skilful in those sciences which they teach, but have skill in the method of teaching, and patience in the practice. ~ Isaac Watts

It's a skill that I worked all my life, and it's been taken away. That's kind of tough to take. ~ Martin Brodeur

When we are very young, we tend to regard the ability to use a colon much as a budding pianist regards the ability to play with crossed hands: many of us, when we are older, regard it as a proof of literary skill, maturity, even of sophistication; and many; whether young, not so young, or old, employ it gauchely, haphazardly, or at best inconsistently. ~ Eric Partridge

To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill ~ Sun Tzu

I am increasingly convinced that people who have power are not necessarily smarter than others. Beyond a certain level of intelligence and level in the hierarchy, everyone is smart. What differentiates people is their political skill and savvy. ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer

No amount of virtuosic skill and choice of subject matter can be a substitute for depth and poetry. ~ Scott Kahn

A Clock stopped
Not the Mantel's
Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing
That just now dangled still ~ Emily Dickinson

The second is observation. Observation is a skill that can be developed, but I was born blessed (or cursed) with the ability to pick up on details and items the average man overlooks. ~ Frank W. Abagnale

I have always loved music; whoso has skill in this art, is of a good temperament, fitted for all things. We must teach music in schools; a schoolmaster ought to have skill in music, or I would not regard him; neither should we ordain young men as preachers, unless they have been well exercised in music ~ Martin Luther

Mother is the master of a thousand voices, and she uses each one with the skill of a butcher wielding a knife. ~ Teri Brown

Love really did conquer all–even two headstrong people who were bound to breed even more obstinate children for the future. But that was all right by her. After all, the world needed heroes who could wield both swords and words with equal skill. ~ Kinley MacGregor

God made her a giving person, and even in this house of people who could be so hateful and hard, her one skill, she knew, was to serve them and make them happy, the way even an unwatered tree still provides whatever shade it can. ~ J. Ryan Stradal

The longer I love, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company ... a church ... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past ... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude ... I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you ... we are in charge of our attitudes. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

All wooden parts are being prepared according to the design of this surveyor and engineer, and [7th-GGF Georg] Kogler prefers following his instructions rather than his own head, since he is convinced of Mr. Avery's skill, experience and honesty ~ Johann Martin Boltzius

France and Germany have the manufacturing and skill base which is useful to us. France is our dependable strategic partner. ~ Narendra Modi

There a difference between having been coded to present a vast set of standardized responses to certain human facial, vocal, and linguistic states and having evolved to exhibit response B to input A in order to bring about a desired social result? ~ Catherynne M Valente

It is merely a linguistic peculiarity, not a logical fact, that we say "that is red" instead of "that reddens," either in the sense of growing, becoming, red, or in the sense of making something else red. ~ John Dewey

We've got two kinds of language in our heads. The kind we're using now is
acquired. It patterns our brains as we're learning it. But there's also a
tongue that's based in the deep structures of the brain, that everyone shares.
These structures consist of basic neural circuits that have to exist in order to
allow our brains to acquire higher languages."
"Linguistic infrastructure," Uncle Enzo says.
"Yeah. I guess 'deep structure' and 'infrastructure' mean the same thing.
Anyway, we can access those parts of the brain under the right conditions.
Glossolalia -- speaking in tongues -- is the output side of it, where the deep
linguistic structures hook into our tongues and speak, bypassing all the higher,
acquired languages. Everyone's known that for some time."
"You're saying there's an input side, too?" Ng says.
"Exactly. It works in reverse. Under the right conditions, your ears -- or
eyes -- can tie into the deep structures, bypassing the higher language
functions. Which is to say, someone who knows the right words can speak words,
or show you visual symbols, that go past all your defenses and sink right into
your brainstem. Like a cracker who breaks into a computer system, bypasses all
the security precautions, and plugs himself into the core, enabling him to exert
absolute control over the machine."
"In that situation, the people who own the computer are helpless," Ng says.
"R ~ Neal Stephenson