Moliere Quotes

Grammar, which can govern even Kings.

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page.

Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.

The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school!

I'm pretty sure when I need a comma; I'm not so sure about a semicolon.

No one complains of the rules of Grammar as fettering Language; because it is understood that correct use is not founded on Grammar, but Grammar on correct use. A just system of Logic or of Rhetoric is analogous, in this respect, to Grammar.

Grammar is the grave of letters.

A schoolchild should be taught grammar—for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.

I never actually learned the rules of grammar, relying instead only on what sounded right.

A schoolchild should be taught grammar - for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases.

To boldly split infinitives that no man had split before.

Constructing passive sentences is a way of concealing your own testicles.

A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case.

Thurber was asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room'?" And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. "This particular comma," Thurber explained, "was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.

I have all these computers and keyboards and synthesizers, and I rattle away. For instance, with The Lion King I wrote over four hours worth of tunes, and they were really pretty -but totally meaningless. So in the end I came up with material I liked. We worked on The Lion King for four years, but I wasn't toying until the last three-and-a-half weeks properly. On Crimson Tide, on the other hand, I just went in and within seconds I knew what I wanted.

Punctuationally speaking, wonder is a period at the end of a statement we've long taken for granted, suddenly looking up and seeing the sinuous curve of a tall black hat on its head, and realizing it was a question mark all along.

The rules of grammar are mere human statutes, which is why when he speaks out of the possessed the Devil himself speaks bad Latin.

Grammar is the analysis of language.

The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as you go along. If you try to come back after doing a paragraph and stick them in the various spots that tempt you you will discover that they tend to swarm like minnows into sorts of crevices whose existence you hadn't realized and before you know it the whole long sentence becomes immobilized and lashed up squirming in commas. Better to use them sparingly, and with affection, precisely when the need for each one arises, nicely, by itself.

History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.

Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: "At the end of an interrogation sentence, place a question mark. You'd be surprised how effective it can be."

Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.

It [England] is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.

Logic is to grammar what the sense of words is to their sound.