"Music: what so many sentences aspire to be."
Sentences quotes
170 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside sentences — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Every word you add dilutes the sentence."
"No" is a complete sentence."
"Being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on."
"Sentence first, verdict afterwards."
"Say what you have to say and the first time you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending - sit down."
"Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins."
"If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship."
"All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death."
"March 4th, the only day that is also a sentence"
"We are all under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite reprieve."
"You rely on a sentence to say more than the denotation and the connotation; you revel in the smoke that the words send up."
"The death sentence is a barbaric act."
"A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end."
""Nothing," I said. "I’m just…" I couldn’t finish the sentence, didn’t know how to. "I’m just very, very fond of you.""
"There are very few innocent sentences in writing."
"I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously."
"Artistically, I find jokes really satisfying aesthetically, because there's something great about getting an idea down to a sentence or two."
"Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance."
"Do not give sentence in another tribunal till you have been yourself judged in the tribunal of Justice."
"It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some single irradiating word."