70 Diction Quotes
Following is our list of the most famous diction quotations and slogans. We've compiled this selection of inspirational diction quotes. Hopefully, these diction quotes will keep you motivated not only during hard times but to expand your diction knowledge!
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Famous Diction Quotes
Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life. — Victor Hugo
When putting words together is good to do it with nicety and caution, your elegance and talent will be evident if by putting ordinary words together you create a new voice. — Horace
In oratory affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn. — Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury
In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker. — Plutarch
ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography. — Ambrose Bierce
A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart. — Peggy Noonan
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words. — Hippocrates
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
Eloquence is logic on fire. — Lyman Beecher
The niftiest turn of phrase, the most elegant flight of rhetorical fancy, isn't worth beans next to a clear thought clearly expressed. — Jeff Greenfield
Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others — Peter Abelard
Words kill, words give life; they're either poison or fruit--- YOU choose. — Solomon
With little art, clear wit and sense Suggest their own delivery. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Eloquence, when in its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection. — David Hume
Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can would and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility. — Amos Oz
Short Diction Quotes
- This dark diction has become America's addiction. — Kanye West
- You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction. — Paul Robeson
- Let us, cautious in diction, And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully. — Martin Buber
- When we are understood, we always speak well, and then all your fine diction serves no purpose. — Moliere
- Words fashioned with somewhat over precise diction are like shapes turned out by a cookie cutter. — Peter De Vries
- Fact is richer than diction. — J. L. Austin
- But Michael Jackson didn't have perfect diction - He said 'chamone' instead of 'come on'. — will.i.am
- I like to try and mix diction and experiences. — George Ezra
- Enunciation, diction, all that stuff. None of that is in my personality. — Shaquille O'Neal
- Actually, I'm addicted to science fiction. Let me make my diction clear - I love sci-fi. — John Rhys-Davies
People Writing About Diction
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 Victor Hugo |
975 | 8205 |
 Horace |
926 | 4340 |
 Plutarch |
392 | 3879 |
 Ambrose Bierce |
957 | 7203 |
 Peggy Noonan |
74 | 382 |
 Hippocrates |
152 | 7089 |
More Diction Quotes
The idea of 'talking white,' a lot of people grew up around that, just the idea that if you speak with proper diction and come off as educated that it's not black and that it's actually anti-black and should be considered only something that white people would do. — Chance the Rapper
An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego. — Sir Alec Guinness
An actor is totally vulnerable. His total personality is exposed to critical judgment - his intellect, his bearing, his diction, his whole appearance. In short, his ego. — Alec Guinness
Every morning, I shall concern myself anew about the boundary, Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No, And pressing forward honor reality. We cannot avoid, Using power, Cannot escape the compulsion, To afflict the world, So let us, cautious in diction, And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully. — Martin Buber
English people don't have very good diction. In France you have to pronounce very particularly and clearly, and learning French at an early age helped me enormously. — Vivien Leigh
When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity. — Edwidge Danticat
The Little Friend is a long book. It's also completely different from my first novel: different landscape, different characters, different use of language and diction, different approach to story. — Donna Tartt
Art-making is learned by immersion. You take in vocabularies of thought and feeling, grammar, diction, gesture, from the poems of others, and emerge with the power to turn language into a lathe for re-shaping, re-knowing your own tongue, heart, and life. — Jane Hirshfield
I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary' diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive. — James Agee
However well equipped our language, it can never be forearmed against all possible cases that may arise and call for description: fact is richer than diction. — J. L. Austin
Apostolic preaching is not marked by its beautiful diction, or literary polish, or Cleverness of expression, but Operates “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. — Arthur Wallis
Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no polished language without books. — Samuel Johnson
We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to aflict the world so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully. — Martin Buber
How can one talk in a classical language about a child who's torn apart in an explosion in the market near his school? People in Iraq don't talk about their joys, their problems, and the destruction of the country in literary diction. — Hassan Blasim
Behold the works of our philosophers; with all their pompous diction, how mean and contemptible they are by comparison with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man? — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Voice really depends on the answer to the question, Who is telling this story? . . . That will color your diction-and determine your metaphors, your sensibility. — Philip Gerard
But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to visible things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
There is an inimitable grace in Virgil's words, and in them principally consists that beauty which gives so inexpressible a pleasure to him who best understands their force. This diction of his, I must once again say, is never to be copied; and since it cannot, he will appear but lame in the best translation. — John Dryden
No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame. — Edward McKendree Bounds
You don't want a diction gathered from the newspapers, caught from the air, common and unsuggestive; but you want one whose every word is full-freighted with suggestion and association, with beauty and power. — Rufus Choate
If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these respects, yet has a plot and artistically constructed incidents. — Aristotle
Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today. Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction. See whether wisdom is just a lot of language. — Carl Sandburg
Jen and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament diction, and were at times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding. — Harper Lee
Your comportment, manners, vocabulary, diction and presentation all communicate your essential message. — Bryant H. McGill
I still have perfect diction! — Aretha Franklin
In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies. — Aristotle
Almost everything that's happened in my poetry is what you might call organic. I don't do much preconceiving. The only consistent plan I've ever had is to try to break my patterns, my habits, my kneejerk tendencies in writing. If I start to sound too much like the Ron Padgett that I've read before, I stop myself. I don't want to get locked perpetually in a mode or a level of diction or a stylistic vein - what is called a poetic voice. — Ron Padgett
For whatever reason, thus far it's been important to me not to write that kind of collection. Which means that I've spent months playing tic-tac-notecard, trying to get the stories in an order whereby stories that are similar in any given way (diction, narrative stance, setting, plot) are separated by others that aren't. — Roy Kesey
Very often, or perhaps more often, and even in very good collections - even in some of the best collections ever written, I would argue - it's because our "voicier" writers hew so closely to one given set of dictional tics that we as readers can't read the books all the way through in a single sitting, because if we did, the stories and their narrators would all start to bleed together. — Roy Kesey
I love opera so much. I would never go back to doing it, but I love to listen - I'm grateful for it. I studied diction, breathing control, phrasing, why the song means something. You want to bring that across to your listeners. — Ledisi
In conducting interviews, my fascination is not only with the content of the conversation, but also the overall delivery of spoken language - so much of one's personality and story is embedded within their speech, their rhythms, the structure of their thoughts, their use of particular diction or dialect. — Steve Cosson
Despite my lovely diction I am going to die. — Lynn Emanuel
Propriety of thought and propriety of diction are commonly found together. Obscurity and affectation are the two greatest faults of style. Obscurity of expression generally springs from confusion of ideas; and the same wish to dazzle, at any cost, which produces affectation in the manner of a writer, is likely to produce sophistry in his reasonings. — Thomas B. Macaulay
Funny enough, every role that I have had, I try to tone down my accent or speak with better diction. — Djimon Hounsou
Many of the finest and most interesting emotions perish forever, because too complex and fugitive for expression. Of all things relating to man, his feelings are perhaps the most evanescent, the greater part dying in the moment of their birth. But while emotions perish, thought blended in diction is immortal. — William Benton Clulow
In Conclusion
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