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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.

William Safire

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William Safire
Age: 79 †
Born: 1929
Born: December 17
Died: 2009
Died: September 27
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
William Lewis Safire
Smile
Lines
Language
Cheshire
Stories
Dangling
Like
Punch
Cat
Remain
Forgotten

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A man who lies, thinking it is the truth, is an honest man, and a man who tells the truth, believing it to be a lie, is a liar.
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A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
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Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when he was British Foreign Secretary, said he received the following telegram from an irate citizen: To hell with you. Offensive letter follows.
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The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads Scientia Est Potentia - knowledge is power. Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you.
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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
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The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.
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In dealing with Syria's dictator...only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria's proxies suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus.
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We are all environmentalists now, but we are not all planetists. An environmentalist realizes that nature has its pleasures and deserves respect. A planetist puts the earth ahead of the earthlings.
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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
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The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
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The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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Took me a while to get to the point today, but that is because I did not know what the point was when I started.
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
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Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
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A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.
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The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.
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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
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The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
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