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

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A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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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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The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
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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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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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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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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
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The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
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Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
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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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Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
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I want my questions answered by an alert and experienced politician, prepared to be grilled and quoted -- not my hand held by an old smoothie.
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I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
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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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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
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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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