Theme

Language

Sentences about sentences: translation, lying, storytelling, and the power of a name. A quotationary that ignores this shelf would be untrue to its own trade.

1. Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.Chinua AchebeA proverb he carried into his essays and interviews
2. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.Maya AngelouI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
3. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.Jane AustenPride and Prejudice
4. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.Francis BaconEssays
5. Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.James BaldwinAs Much Truth as One Can Bear
6. Tell all the truth but tell it slant.Emily DickinsonPoem 1263
7. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.Joan DidionThe White Album
8. Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.Samuel JohnsonJames Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson
9. Here lies one whose name was writ in water.John KeatsHis epitaph
10. I quote others only in order the better to express myself.Michel de MontaigneEssays
11. If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.Toni MorrisonA remark to students, repeated in talks from the early 1980s
12. Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.George OrwellPolitics and the English Language
13. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.George OrwellNineteen Eighty-Four
14. Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.Dorothy ParkerEnough Rope
15. He seems to me equal to the gods, that man who sits facing you and listens close to your sweet speaking.SapphoFragment 31
16. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.Percy Bysshe ShelleyA Defence of Poetry
17. Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.Susan SontagAgainst Interpretation
18. The report of my death was an exaggeration.Mark TwainA note sent from London
19. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.Mark TwainNotebook
20. The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.Ida B. WellsA motto of her reporting
21. A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.Virginia WoolfA Room of One’s Own
22. I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams.W. B. YeatsHe Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
23. I accuse.Émile ZolaJ’Accuse…!

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