Mark Forsyth Quotes

The beauty of merism is that it's absolutely unnecessary. It's words for words' sake: a gushing torrent of invention filled with noun and noun and signifying nothing. Why a rhetorical figure that gabs on and on for no good reason should be central to the rite of marriage is beyond me. ~ Mark Forsyth

We all know that scientific words need an obscure classical origin to make them sound impressvie to those who wouldn't know an idiopathic craniofacial erythema if it hit them in the face. ~ Mark Forsyth

Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811) records that: The Welch are said to be so remarkably fond of cheese, that in cases of difficulty their midwives apply a piece of toasted cheese to the janua vita [gates of life] to attract and entice the young Taffy, who on smelling it makes most vigorous efforts to come forth. ~ Mark Forsyth

Gambling in medieval France was a simple business. All you needed were some friends, a pot, and a chicken. In fact, you didn't need friends - you could do this with your enemies - but the pot and the chicken were essential. ~ Mark Forsyth

Schoolchildren are asked to write essays on what William Blake thought about the Tiger; despite the fact that William Blake was a nutjob whose opinions, in a civilized society, would be of no interest to anybody apart from his parole officer. ~ Mark Forsyth

Offices are peculiar places and nobody is ever quite sure what happens in them, least of all the people who work there. But the day tends to begin with a morning meeting, in which everybody decides what they will fail to do for the rest of the day. ~ Mark Forsyth

If you're too overcome to even finish your sentence then you must be sincere, you must really mean what you're not saying, you must ... I'm sorry. I cannot type. My fingers are crying. ~ Mark Forsyth

Most people can improvise in unrhymed dactyls for hours. It's just that you lose all your friends if you do. ~ Mark Forsyth

It is much harder than you might think to show people your bottom. ~ Mark Forsyth

So Shakespeare stole; but he did wonderful things with his plunder. He's like somebody who nicks your old socks and then darns them. ~ Mark Forsyth

A book would therefore have a twofold benefit. First, it would rid me of my demons and perhaps save some innocent conversationalist from my clutches. Second, unlike me, a book could be left snugly on the bedside table or beside the lavatory: opened at will and closed at will. ~ Mark Forsyth

Wouldst like to con a glimmer with me this early black?', which he [Cab Calloway] helpfully explains as 'the proper way to ask a young lady to go to the movies'. It should be noted here, that if the object of your affections replies 'Kill me', they are not requesting to be euthanatised and you should not actually murder them. Kill me is merely the Cab Calloway way of saying 'Show me a good time' and is the best response you could have hoped for. Jive was rather confusing in this way. ~ Mark Forsyth

Anything to do with persuasion is rhetoric, right down to the argumentum ad baculum, which means threatening somebody with a stick until they agree with you. ~ Mark Forsyth

A bar, as any good dictionary will tell you, is a rod of wood or iron that can be used to fasten a gate. From this came the idea of a bar as any let or hindrance that can stop you going where you want to; specifically the bar in a pub or tavern is the bar-rier behind which is stored all the lovely intoxicating liquors that only the bar-man is allowed to lay is hands on without forking out. ~ Mark Forsyth

It was after an incident such as this that my friends and family decided something must be done. They gathered for a confabulation and, having established that secure psychiatric care was beyond their means, they turned in despair to the publishing industry, which has a long history of picking up where social work leaves off. ~ Mark Forsyth

Funny chap, Jesus. First, it's a little strange to assert that a piece of bread is your body. If you or I tried that we wouldn't be believed. We certainly wouldn't be allowed to run a bakery. Yet, given that Jesus was the son of God (this point has occasionally been disputed by people who will burn for ever in God's loving torment), we'll just have to take him at his word. ~ Mark Forsyth

Shakespeare was not a genius. He was, without the distant shadow of doubt, the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But not a genius. No angels handed him his lines, no fairies proofread for him. Instead, he learnt techniques, he learnt tricks, and he learnt them well. ~ Mark Forsyth

After all, fiction is only fact minus time. ~ Mark Forsyth

Yet hypotaxis (along with reason) has been declining for a century or more. Gone are those heady and incomprehensible sentences of Johnson, Dickens, and Austen, replaced with the cruel, brutalist parataxes of writers whose aim is to agitate and distress. The long sentence is now a ridiculed rarity, usually hidden away in the Terms and Conditions, its commas and colons, clauses and caveats languishing unread and unloved. ~ Mark Forsyth

That's how Dickens wanted to get his image across, the reader is simply bludgeoned into submission. ~ Mark Forsyth

It is time to buddle (scrub in water) all that is not illutile (unwash-awayable). Baudelaire said that humans were deluded if they thought they could wash away all their spots with vile tears, but Baudelaire was French and therefore knew nothing about hygiene or shower gel. ~ Mark Forsyth

So familiar are eggs to us, however, that in the eighteenth century they were referred to as cackling farts, on the basis that chickens cackled all the time and eggs came out of the back of them. ~ Mark Forsyth

Poetry is much more important than the truth, and, if you don't believe that, try using the two methods to get laid. ~ Mark Forsyth

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.' Matthew 19:24. This verse has always rather worried rich men who tend to ask themselves how much a really damned big needle would cost. ~ Mark Forsyth

Love is nothing because those who do something for the love of it do it for nothing. ~ Mark Forsyth

The Oxford English Dictionary is the greatest work of reference ever written, and it's largely the result of a Scotsman who left school at fourteen, and a criminally insane American. ~ Mark Forsyth

The problem with the alphabet is that it bears no relation to anything at all, and when words are arranged alphabetically they are uselessly separated. In the OED, for example, aardvarks are 19 volumes away from the zoo, yachts are 18 volumes from the beach, and wine is 17 volumes from the nearest corkscrew. ~ Mark Forsyth

It's a fifty-fifty chance that your main aim is to be thelyphthoric, a word that comes from the Greek thely meaning "woman" and phthoric meaning "corrupting," thus the OED's simple definition: "that corrupts or ruins women. ~ Mark Forsyth

So popular is alliteration that in the 1960s it actually made a grab for political power. In the 1960s a vast radical youth movement began campaigning to do things for the sole reason that they began with the same letter. Ban the bomb. Burn your bra. Power to the people. For a moment there it seemed as though alliteration would change the world. But then the spirit of idealism faded and those who had manned the barricades went off and got jobs in marketing. ~ Mark Forsyth

They don't have to be sentences, they could be divided by commas, they could be divided by semi-colons; there's a class of people who get very worked up about such things - they're lonely people - they tend to have stains down the front of their shirts - they'll tell you that dashes should be used only to subordinate complete sentences. You must forgive them. ~ Mark Forsyth

That the West thinks that seven is lucky and the Chinese think eight is shows both that numerology is wrong and that it's popular across the world. Numbers feel mysterious and significant. So all you need to do to sound mysterious and significant is to pick a number, any number. ~ Mark Forsyth

Every dictionary contains a world. I open a book of thieves' slang from Queen Anne's reign and they have a hundred words for swords, for wenches, and for being hanged. They did no die, they danced on nothing. Then I peek into any one of my rural Victorian dictionaries, compiled by a lonely clergyman, with words for coppices, thickets, lanes, diseases of horses and innumerable terms for kinds of eel. They gave names to the things of their lives, and their lives are collected in these dictionaries – every detail and joke and belief. I have their worlds piled up on my desk. ~ Mark Forsyth

If you are to use Alexander Graham Bell's product, which is to say the blower, you should, in all courtesy, use it as he would have wished; and Dr Bell insisted that all phone calls should begin with the words 'Ahoy, ahoy'. Nobody knows why he insisted this – he had no connection to the navy – but insist he did and started every phone call that way. Nobody else did, and it was at the suggestion of his great rival Edison that people took to saying 'Hello'. This seems unfair. ~ Mark Forsyth

If Jupiter was in the ascendant when you were born, you are of a jovial disposition; and if you're not jovial but miserable and saturnine that's a disaster, because a disaster is a dis-astro, or misplaced planet. Disaster is Latin for ill-starred.
The fault, as Shakespeare put it, is not in our stars; but the language is. ~ Mark Forsyth

A dutiful son has to remember not to slouch or swear or, in Hamlet's case, murder the old bat. ~ Mark Forsyth

Pot itself has nothing to do with pots and pans, but comes from the Mexican-Spanish word potiguaya, which means marijuana leaves. And marijuana is a Mexification of 'Mary Jane' for reasons that everybody is much too stoned to remember. ~ Mark Forsyth

There's always a strange feeling you get when you come across one particular line by chance. It feels somehow significant. That's irrational of course, but humans are irrational creatures. Even the sturdiest, most down-to-earth chap will turn pale if he opens a book at random and sees the words PREPARE TO MEET THY DEATH. ~ Mark Forsyth

The palindromeis anold tradition: the first thing that man ever said was, probably, "Madam, I'm Adam." And it has caused terrible distress to even the greatest literary minds ~ Mark Forsyth

Now some people will tell you that great writing cannot be learnt. Such people should be hit repeatedly on the nose until they promise not to talk nonsense any more. ~ Mark Forsyth

Above all, I hope I have dispelled the bleak and imbecilic idea that the aim of writing is to express yourself clearly in plain, simple English using as few words as possible. This is a fiction, a fib, a fallacy, a fantasy, and a falsehood. To write for mere utility is as foolish as to dress for mere utility ... Clothes and language can be things of beauty, I would no more write without art because I didn't need to than I would wander outdoors naked just because it was warm enough. ~ Mark Forsyth

For though one antithesis is grand, a long list of antitheses is divine and is technically known as a progressio. It was a favorite of God and Dickens ~ Mark Forsyth

Oscar Wilde said that "All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime," and then got sent off to Reading Gaol to reconsider and write ballads. ~ Mark Forsyth

The standard modern measurement for inebriation is the Ose system. This has been considerably developed over the years, but the common medical consensus currently has jocose, verbose, morose, bellicose, lachrymose, comatose, adios.
This is a workable but incomplete system, as it fails to take in otiose (meaning impractical) which comes just after jocose. Nor does it have grandiose preceding bellicose. And how they managed to miss out globose (amorphous or formless) before comatose is beyond me. ~ Mark Forsyth

The Latin word for sausage was botulus, from which English gets two words. One of them is the lovely botuliform, which means sausage-shaped and is a more useful word than you might think. The other word is botulism.
Sausages may taste lovely, but it's usually best not to ask what's actually in them. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it was a sausage-maker who disposed of the body. ~ Mark Forsyth

You can spend all day trying to think of some universal truth to set down on paper, and some poets try that. Shakespeare knew that it's much easier to string together some words beginning with the same letter. ~ Mark Forsyth

The importance of English word order is also the reason that the idea that you can't end a sentence with a preposition is utter hogwash. In fact, it would be utter hogwash anyway, and anyone who claims that you can't end a sentence with up, should be told to shut. It is, as Shakespeare put it, such stuff as dreams are made on, but it's one of those silly English beliefs that flesh is heir to. ~ Mark Forsyth

Genius, as we tend to talk about it today, is some sort of mysterious and combustible substance that burns brightly and burns out. It's the strange gift of poets and pop stars that allows them to produce one wonderful work in their early twenties and then nothing. It is mysterious. It is there. It is gone. ~ Mark Forsyth

A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else. ~ Mark Forsyth

Stern people dislike rhetoric, and unfortunately it's usually stern people who are in charge: solemn fools who believe that truth is more important than beauty. ~ Mark Forsyth

Today, in what Harvey Mansfield calls our "gender-neutral" society," there are no social norms. Eight decades after the Titanic, a German-built ferry en route from Estonia to Sweden sank in the Baltic Sea. Of the 1,051 passengers, only 139 lived to tell the tale. But the distribution of the survivors was very different from that of the Titanic. Women and children first? No female under fifteen or over sixty-five made it. Only 5 percent of all women passengers lived. The bulk of the survivors were young men. Forty-three percent of men aged 20 to 24 made it. ~ Mark Steyn

Erase those negative tapes playing in your head. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you forget. He can cast your hurt in forgetfulness. ~ Bidemi Mark-Mordi

As a modern-day role model, I'd have to go for Tiger Woods. I'm also a massive Sachin Tendulkar fan. ~ Mark Lawrenson

But little else could deter Craig Binky, for he believed that everything about him was destined to be triumphal. Harry Penn was certain that in his nearly one hundred years he had never encountered a soul more intensely marinated in self-satisfaction. Craig Binky's pomposity was often relieved, for others, by what Harry Penn generously termed Mr. Binky's somewhat inexact intelligence. ~ Mark Helprin

Shayla McKinnon, this mark proves what I already suspected. You are my mate. You are destined to walk beside me, rule with me, share my blood and, through that, my immortality. ~ Laura Kaye

even the most sacred bonds could be broken under enough stress. ~ Mark Lawrence

Sometime in the not too distant future, denying gays the right to marry will be viewed as historically corrupt - as corrupt as denying slaves their freedom. ~ Mark McKinnon

A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public ~ Mark Twain

A pilot must have a memory developed to absolute perfection. But there are two higher qualities which he also must have. He must have good and quick judgment and decision, and a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake. ~ Mark Twain

too. -In the Jets Super Bowl III win over the Colts, Matt Snell would put together the first 100 yard rushing game in Super Bowl history when he carried the ball 30 times for 121 yards and a touchdown. -Singer Aaron Neville was the first person to sing the national anthem at two different Super Bowls. He first did it at Super Bowl XXIV in New Orleans and then did it again at Super Bowl XL in Detroit. -Quarterback Joe Namath won the MVP Award of Super Bowl III without even throwing a touchdown pass. -At one point in Super Bowl XLI the Colts called eight straight rushing plays and all of them were hand offs to running back Dominic Rhodes. --Cowboys running back Duane Thomas was the ~ Mark Peters

As the glare of day mellowed into twilight we looked down upon a picture which is celebrated all over the world. I think I have read about 400 times that when Mohammed was a simple camel driver he reached this point and looked down upon Damascus for the first time, and then made a certain renowned remark. He said man could enter only one paradise; he preferred to go to the one above. So he sat down there and feasted his eyes upon the earthly paradise of Damascus and then went away without entering the gates. They have erected a tower on the hill to mark the spot where he stood. ~ Mark Twain

As one boy said, 'I was thinking all these horrible thoughts about my parents when suddenly it hit me-if they're all that bad, how come I'm so wonderful' ~ Mark Twain

Some who have been perfectly healthy and able to bear children have avoided this responsibility, and in doing so have resorted to the use of harmful practices and devices resulting often in physical injury to the wife and demoralization to both parties. Some have wondered if the Church would approve such practices. Of course it never has and never could. ~ Mark E. Petersen

Perfume follows you; it chases you and lingers behind you. It's a reference mark. Perfume makes silence talk. ~ Sonia Rykiel

The Spirit is testifying that a new day is dawning. The stage of the world is being set for a fullness of a harvest and a genuine apostolic reformation in a new way. ~ Mark Chironna

The institution of royalty in any form is an insult to the human race. ~ Mark Twain

Give bouquets of business. Introduce your clients to each other so they can work and prosper together. ~ Mark Victor Hansen

And what does it amount to?" said Satan, with his evil chuckle. "Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense--to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in in the language of slave to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart--if you have one--you despise yourselves for it. The first man was hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. Drink to their perpetuation! Drink to their augmentation! Drink to--" Then he saw by our faces how much we were hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped chuckling... ~ Mark Twain

When an audience does not complain, it is a compliment, and when it does, it is a compliment, too, if unaccompanied by violence. ~ Mark Twain

There's a flame of magic inside every stone & every flower, every bird that sings & every frog that croaks. There's magic in the trees & the hills & the river & the rocks, in the sea & the stars & the wind, a deep, wild magic that's as old as the world itself. It's in you too, my darling girl, and in me, and in every living creature, be it ever so small. Even the dirt I'm sweeping up now is stardust. In fact, all of us are made from the stuff of stars. ~ Kate Forsyth

Justice can sleep for years and awaken when it is least expected. A miracle is nothing more than dormant justice from another time arriving to compensate those it has cruelly abandoned. Whoever knows this is willing to suffer, for he knows that nothing is in vain. ~ Mark Helprin

Leadership is the ability to help people and organizations surpass themselves. ~ Mark Sanborn

Such incidents usually move me to try to find relief in the building of a maxim. It is a good way, because if you have luck you can get the venom out of yourself and into the maxim; then comfort and a healed spirit follow. Maxims are not easy to make; they do not come in right shape at the first call; they are creatures of evolution, of development; you have to try several plans before you get one that suits you, or even comes fairly near to suiting you. ~ Mark Twain

If the economy is strained, then Social Security, like the rest of the government, will be, too. ~ Mark Dayton

Ambition is ever tempered by experience. Otherwise, fortune makes fools of us all. ~ Mark Kingwell

You wanna be friends?"
Click click. Was that so impossible? Was he so mad, suddenly disliked her so much again, that he didn't want to be in the same building? "Yes."
"Friends like before or after we had sex on the floor?"
Her thumb stopped. "Before."
"Not interested."
"Why?"
"Because I don't want to be your friend."
"Oh." She swallowed her disappointment. It might be for the best, but she suddenly didn't want what was for the best. She didn't want to hate Sam and have Sam hate her. What choice did she have? "Okay."
"I want to be your lover. I can't pretend I don't want more. I want to be with you, Autumn. I want to get you naked and throw your legs over my shoulders"
She dropped the pen.
"I want to leave a mark on the inside of your thigh. ~ Rachel Gibson

Is not this steadfastness to mark, to make, the character of your lives? Is it not God's will that we should press steadily on to our goal in obedience to Him, in channels of His choosing, whether in sunshine or shadow, in the cheer of spring or in the chill of winter, neither detained by pleasure nor deterred by pain? ~ Maltbie Davenport Babcock

I read once that explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog," Mark said. "You find out how it works, but the frog dies in the process. ~ Cassandra Clare

Nothing leaves a scar upon an Authors heart more than a book they've written with purpose going unread. ~ Mark W. Boyer

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry. ~ Mark Twain

This being 1962, no one thought it odd to have a mime program on radio. ~ Mark Lewisohn

All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Few things worth having can be got easily. ~ Mark Lawrence

Signs of communist domination of the andartes were not difficult to find, but at the same time there was no indication that the KKE desired to seize power by force. On the contrary, what evidence there is suggests that the KKE - in so far as its divided leadership was capable of any decisions at all in the absence of a clear lead from Moscow - had decided not to seize power at a time when it could easily have done so. ~ Mark Mazower

Scattered among these things are reminders that sound once existed: a metronome, a drumming pad, a guitar pick, a trumpet mouthpiece, a music stand, a tuning fork, a block of rosin ... The older instruments bear the marks of those who have already played them, the scuffs and bites and dents that are the mysterious scars of sound. In their midst the house hangs, tenuous and enveloping, a sounding board waiting to be struck. ~ Geoffrey O'Brien

If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear. ~ Mark Twain

Terror thrives on the bottomless pit of imagination, and the imagination comes to life with the passage of time. Time is its vintner, the family its furtile field. ~ Mark Nykanen

Look at the way celebrities and politicians are using Facebook already. When Ashton Kutcher posts a video, he gets hundreds of pieces of feedback. Maybe he doesn't have time to read them all or respond to them all, but he's getting good feedback and getting a good sense of how people are thinking about that and maybe can respond to some of it. ~ Mark Zuckerberg

I don't cook - I can cook - but I'm not very good. I like being asked over for dinner, because she can't cook either. We would starve if it weren't for modern technology. I know how to work a microwave, but love home cooked meals. ~ Mark Mothersbaugh

God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible - what a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves. - A.W. TOZER ~ R. Mark Dillon

I take my hat off to my friend, Mark Wahlberg, because I know that it took him a long time to make 'The Fighter', and he overcame a lot of obstacles to do it, and now the film is an unqualified success. ~ Holt McCallany