Everett Dirksen Quotes

You can say the opposite of something you've said but you can't do the opposite of something you've done.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

All literature is an effort at the formal character of the epigram.

I talk in subjects and verbs, and sort of wind around in concentric circles until I get far enough away from the beginning so that I can call it the end, and it ends.

You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?

I've always thought my poems told stories.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

I have not written a perfect sentence, in the literary sense. It's a lot easier to throw a perfect pass than to write a perfect sentence, if that sentence is meant to perform more than a mechanical function.

Man does not live by words alone, in spite of the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.

I don't like poetry that just slaps violent words on a canvas, as it were.

Lord, give us the wisdom to utter words that are gentle and tender, for tomorrow we may have to eat them.

Now I come to 75 years of age, I think what's most important in life is your conscience. If you told a lie and made other people suffer, I think that's very difficult when you reach this age.

I don't write things that are wildly abstractly atonal.

With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you can never go back.

There comes a time in every political convention where I eat my words.

I said what I said, but I shouldn’t have said it.

I'd rather split an infinitive than split an idea.

… he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.

When you find yourself in a position of leadership, people follow your every move … When the leader talks, people listen. When the leader acts, people watch. So you have to be careful about everything you say and everything you do

When I was a kid, I got in trouble for lying a lot, and I had a teacher say, 'Instead of lying, write it down, because if you write it down, it's not a lie anymore; it's fiction.'

Don't be scared of 'said.' Writers sometimes go looking for alternatives because they worry that 'he said' and 'she said' will feel repetitive if they're used all the time, but I swear, they won't.

I was bad, but I was one of the kids that never got caught. If anyone ever knew I did something, it was because I told them. 'Cause I'm a really good liar, so I end up snitching on myself.