Quote

Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.

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
Sometimes
Tired
Flatters
Feels
Meaning
Readership
Needs
Especially
Nuance
Perhaps
Unfamiliar
Term
Exquisite
Word
Sensitivity
Need
Precise
Feel
Poetic

More quotes by William Safire

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It is in the nature of tyranny to deride the will of the people as the voice of the mob, and to denounce the cry for freedom as the roar of anarchy.
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One difference between French appeasement and American appeasement is that France pays ransom in cash and gets its hostages back while the United States pays ransom in arms and gets additional hostages taken.
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You don't overturn a previous court's decisions lightly and I think most Americans are somewhere in the middle on abortion and there's not going to be a revolution here at all.
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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
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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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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
William Safire
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Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
William Safire
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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
William Safire
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George Washington had a tough second term.
William Safire
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Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
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One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpieces, accessible and relevant to today's audience.
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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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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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Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
William Safire
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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
William Safire
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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
William Safire
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
William Safire
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The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.
William Safire