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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.
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
Column
Able
Columns
Look
Purely
Little
Identify
Without
Picture
Looks
Feel
Reader
Ratio
Feels
Funny
Ratios
Littles
More quotes by William Safire
Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
William Safire
Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
William Safire
The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
William Safire
Give your main clause a little space. Prose is not like boxing the skilled writer deliberately telegraphs his punch, knowing that the reader wants to take the message directly on the chin.
William Safire
No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
William Safire
George Washington had a tough second term.
William Safire
Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
William Safire
By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
William Safire
This is what it's all about. From what I could see, you could get a bunch of people together, whip up the press and have some impact.
William Safire
Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
William Safire
At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
William Safire
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
I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control.
William Safire
I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
William Safire