Arthur Quinn > Quotes

“Style, someone said, is like a frog; you can dissect the thing, but it somehow dies in the process.”
― Arthur Quinn, Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase

“Caesar seems to have omitted his conjunction to speed things up; he is emphasizing how quickly the conquest of a place follows from its being sighted by a great and ambitious general. Lincoln's omission is more subtle—or so it seems to me. Usually the items on a list are different but related things: eggs, butter, cheese. Sometimes they achieve a unity in which their distinctiveness is lost to all but the analytic mind, a good cheese omelet. Or perhaps we might even decide that they are but manifestations or expressions of the same thing. Lincoln would have us see these three aspects of government as constituting an inseparable whole. The asyndeton helps him do this.”
― Arthur Quinn, Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase

“The baroque identification of eloquence with copiousness is so far from official twentieth century taste that scarcely a guidebook on writing does not contain an admonition such as the following: "Be brief. Do not repeat yourself. Say what you have to say in as few words as possible. To belabor your point is to risk boring your reader—or even insulting his intelligence."

Erasmus would not lack words for a reply. He would point out that the author of this advice had thought it so important that he was not brief, did repeat himself, used as many words as he dared, and had insulted the intelligence of his reader by contradicting himself in the process. "How shall I tell what joy titillated the spirit of your Erasmus when he read your foolish passage?”
― Arthur Quinn, Figures of Speech

“A figure is an unusual choice. Robert Frost claimed that his choosing the road less taken made all the difference. Almost all of us will be taking roads more frequently travelled than Frost's, but they may still be among the less travelled.”
― Arthur Quinn, Figures of Speech: 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase