Popular quotes about Letters! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 95
Four. That's what I want you to remember. If you don't get your idea across in the first four minutes, you won't do it. Four sentences to a paragraph. Four letters to a word. The most important words in the English language all have four letters. Home. Love. Food. Land. Peace. . .I know peace has five letters, but any damn fool knows it should have four.
Lyndon B. Johnson[Mary Wortley Montagu] wrote more letters, with fewer punctuation marks, than any Englishwoman of her day; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby, nearly blinded himself in deciphering the two volumes of undated correspondence which were printed in 1810. Two more followed in 1813, after which the gallant Baron either died at his post or was smitten with despair; for sixty-eight cases of letters lay undisturbed ... 'Les morts n'écrivent point,' said Madame de Maintenon hopefully; but of what benefit is this inactivity, when we still continue to receive their letters?
Agnes RepplierMany people believe letters the most personal and revealing form of communication. In them, we expect to find the charmer at his nap, slumped, open-mouthed, profoundly himself without thought for appearances. Yet, this is not quite true. Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope.
Elizabeth HardwickThe best cover letters I've read are from people who have a passion for my company, and can make that passion come to life on a page. The letters that make me say, 'Yes! This person really gets it.' Because, at the end of the day, I want to hire people who already get it. Most hiring managers do.
Kathryn MinshewI think it's important to visit people in prison. And if you know anyone in prison, I would encourage you very much to visit them. They're a good audience! I always get good letters from prisoners. I don't usually answer them because I have a lot going on in my life, but I get some really good ones, I get some really good letters from prison.
John WatersA well-known magazine asks a man how they should refer to him, as Psychologist X, as Author X? He suggests man of letters, for that is what he is, in the eighteenth-century meaning. But they can't buy that because the word doesn't exist in Time-style; he cannot be that, and presumably the old function of letters cannot exist.
Paul GoodmanIn a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.
Samuel JohnsonI think that Hick was in love with Eleanor, and Eleanor was in love with Hick. I think it's very important to look at the letters that are in my book, because unlike some of the recent published letters, I have both the personal and the political. And their relationship is about ardor. It's about fun. And it's also about politics.
Blanche Wiesen CookI like writing letters and receiving letters. It's a shame that we've lost the art of letter-writing and saving correspondence. I mourn that.
Elizabeth McGovernI'll have 15 letters today from mostly young kids who don't like what's going on and want to do something about it, and [they ask me] if I can give them some advice as to what they should do, or can I tell them what to read or something.
Noam ChomskyAlgebra messed up one of those divisions between things that help you make sense of the world and keep it tidy. Letters make words; figures make numbers. They had no business getting tangled up together.
Mal PeetSince that deluge of newspaper articles I have been so flooded with questions, invitations, suggestions, that I keep dreaming I am roasting in Hell, and the mailman is the devil eternally yelling at me, showering me with more bundles of letters at my head because I have not answered the old ones.
Albert EinsteinI mean I appreciate fan mail and that the people like what I am doing but I can't answer it. If I would answer 25 letters a day I would be just a guy answering mail and not an artist anymore.
Henry RollinsThere were people whose only interest in life was writing letters. To the newspapers, to authors, to strangers, to City Councils, to the police. It did not much matter to whom; the satisfaction of writing seemed to be all.
Josephine TeyBut my father was also the one who told me I needed to clean up my mouth or I'd never find a man. What's very important to him is manners. Show up on time. Always send thank-you letters. He is one of the more thoughtful humans I've ever met. He's a great man and a very good dad.
Zosia MametI have done quite a few signings at bookstores, libraries and conferences. I have received phone calls and letters from people who liked the book.
Kate DiCamilloYOU have no room to laugh, that's all. I'm not doing any worse with Boovish than you did with English.' Get off of the car,' J.Lo huffed. 'I am an English superstar.' Uh-uh. There's no comparison. 'Gratuity' in written Boovish has seventeen different bubbles that all have to be the right size and in the right place. 'J.Lo' in written English only has three letters, and you still spelled it 'M-smiley face-pound sign.
Adam RexA typical agent in New York gets 400 query letters a month. Of those, they might ask to read 3-4 manuscripts, and of those, they might ask to represent 1.
Nicholas SparksMy fiancรฉ, you see, belonged to another religion. He was a Parsi. And this was something nobody could stand - all of India was against us. They wrote to Gandhi, to my fther, to me. Insults, death threats. Every day the postman arrived with an enormous sack and dumped the letters on the floor. We even stopped reading them; we let a couple of friends read them and tell us what was in them.
Indira GandhiIn America one of the first things done in a new State is to make the post go there; in the forests of Michigan there is no cabin so isolated, no valley so wild, but that letters and newspapers arrive at least once a week.
Alexis de TocquevilleWhy should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass; I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.
Walt WhitmanOf all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.
A. N. WilsonReverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close intervals, nor were they so long.... This one would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter.
Blaise PascalLetters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.
Lord ChesterfieldWhatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language - this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.
Adrienne RichI've found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It's possible to make a connection with any kind of writing - as long as the writing is good.
Sara SheridanBetween Twitter and Facebook I have nearly 70,000 followers, so my colleagues receive the responses. They show some of them to me, and I am always interested to read what people have to say. I filter all the information that reaches me, from letters in the newspaper, to conversations. There are many influences that shape my decisions, and often people on Twitter are thinking along the same lines as I do on an issue.
Helen ZilleMy dear Isa, I now sit down on my botom to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me.
Marjorie FlemingI investigated reported Japanese atrocities committed by the Japanese Army in Nanking and elsewhere. Verbal accounts of reliable eyewitnesses and letters from individuals whose credibility is beyond question afford convincing proof that the Japanese Army behaved and is continuing to behave in a fashion reminiscent of Attila and his Huns. Not less than 300,000 Chinese civilians were slaughtered, many in cold blood.
Koki HirotaIf you trace the history of Islamist terrorism, you see that its founders were great admirers of European fascism. They read the texts of European fascism, they quoted them in speeches and letters. This is not from the Koran - the Koran doesn't teach you how to repress people; there's nothing in there about women having to cover their faces, there's certainly nothing about suicide bombing.
Bernard-Henri LevyTruly, Autumn is my season,โ the scarlet beast chorted. โSpring and Summer and Winter all begin with such late letters! But Autumn and Fall, I have loved best, because they are best to love.
Catherynne M. ValenteI have got an iPad, what a joy! Van Gogh would have loved it, and he could have written his letters on it as well.
David HockneyI am strangely addicted to the writing of long letters, which, I am afraid, tire you; and for the future, I believe, I must be less communicative, in order to be less troublesome.
Mary CollyerIf anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.
Noam ChomskyWithout the letters of condolence, telegrams of congratulations and even occasional postcards, the friendship of a separated friend is not a social reality. It has no existence without the rites of friendship. Social rituals create a reality which would be nothing without them.
Mary DouglasI'm much more into old-world, intimate conversations on the phone. I like to write letters.
Kimora Lee SimmonsAnd we were Banksy on an overpass in New Orleans spray-painting porch lights on the hurricane. We were welcome mats for the un-forgiven. We never sold our windpipes to make a living. We were the letters sent to the wrong address, but opened anyway. We opened anyway.
Andrea GibsonWhen I was a kid in Houston, we were so poor we couldn't afford the last 2 letters, so we called ourselves po'.
George ForemanI have what I came to find in my research is a mild form of synesthesia, though I never would have labeled it as such. It's how I think about numbers and letters. They all have inherent genders.
Leni ZumasThe the relationship between the prime minister and the monarch is very much a personal one and when it comes to the constitution of the Order of Australia, which is headed by the monarch, this is governed by letters patent, which are a matter between the prime minister and the monarch.
Tony AbbottTo read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the business of a man of letters.
Samuel JohnsonRejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.
Isaac AsimovYou're not allowed to park a truck in your driveway. You're not allowed to work on your house on Sunday. The people who enforce these laws are nuts. After I wrote a column on this, I got I don't know how many letters from Coral Gables homeowners, story after story after story, wonderfully horrible stories. And the venom they felt for their own government!
Dave BarryLetters are false really - they are expressions of the way you wish you were instead of the way you are.
Anne Sexton