Anaphora Quotes

i think i never arrived, so they stopped waiting. i think a grief was stitched into me long before i was born. i think there is more to life than being understood, but at night it hurts, illogically, like a star mourning its own existence. i think i never had a chance.

But what it comes down to is that Petra Anaphora once tried to blackmail me into killing my wife, and I think it’s long past time she paid for the offense.

It is the simplest phrase you can imagine,” Favreau said, “three monosyllabic words that people say to each other every day.” But the speech etched itself in rhetorical lore. It inspired music videos and memes and the full range of reactions that any blockbuster receives online today, from praise to out-of-context humor to arch mockery. Obama’s “Yes, we can” refrain is an example of a rhetorical device known as epistrophe, or the repetition of words at the end of a sentence. It’s one of many famous rhetorical types, most with Greek names, based on some form of repetition. There is anaphora, which is repetition at the beginning of a sentence (Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields”). There is tricolon, which is repetition in short triplicate (Abraham Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”). There is epizeuxis, which is the same word repeated over and over (Nancy Pelosi: “Just remember these four words for what this legislation means: jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs”). There is diacope, which is the repetition of a word or phrase with a brief interruption (Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) or, most simply, an A-B-A structure (Sarah Palin: “Drill baby drill!”). There is antithesis, which is repetition of clause structures to juxtapose contrasting ideas (Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”). There is parallelism, which is repetition of sentence structure (the paragraph you just read). Finally, there is the king of all modern speech-making tricks, antimetabole, which is rhetorical inversion: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” There are several reasons why antimetabole is so popular. First, it’s just complex enough to disguise the fact that it’s formulaic. Second, it’s useful for highlighting an argument by drawing a clear contrast. Third, it’s quite poppy, in the Swedish songwriting sense, building a hook around two elements—A and B—and inverting them to give listeners immediate gratification and meaning. The classic structure of antimetabole is AB;BA, which is easy to remember since it spells out the name of a certain Swedish band.18 Famous ABBA examples in politics include: “Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.” —Benjamin Disraeli “East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other.” —Ronald Reagan “The world faces a very different Russia than it did in 1991. Like all countries, Russia also faces a very different world.” —Bill Clinton “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.” —George W. Bush “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” —Hillary Clinton In particular, President John F. Kennedy made ABBA famous (and ABBA made John F. Kennedy famous). “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind,” he said, and “Each increase of tension has produced an increase of arms; each increase of arms has produced an increase of tension,” and most famously, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Antimetabole is like the C–G–Am–F chord progression in Western pop music: When you learn it somewhere, you hear it everywhere.19 Difficult and even controversial ideas are transformed, through ABBA, into something like musical hooks.

Anaphora is effective in the building of a movement because it increases the intensity of an idea, and intense ideas sear themselves into our brain. There’s a reason why Winston Churchill chose anaphora as his go-to rhetorical device to rally the British people in World War II: We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. Business leaders often shy away from anaphora because they believe it’s a tool reserved for political speeches. Actually, anaphora can be seamlessly and comfortably incorporated into business presentations meant to inspire audiences to see the world differently.

Yea, and thy deeds shall thou know, and great shall thy gladness be; As a picture all of gold thy life-days shalt thou see, And know that thou too wert a God to abide through the hurry and haste; A God in the golden hall, a God on the rain-swept waste, A God in the battle triumphant, a God on the heap of the slain: And thine hope shall arise and blossom, and thy love shall be quickened again: And then shalt thou see before thee the face of all earthly ill; Thou shalt drink of the cup of awakening that thine hand hath holpen to fill; By the side of the sons of Odin shalt thou fashion a tale to be told In the hall of the happy Baldur: nor there shall the tale grow old Of the days before the changing, e'en those that over us pass. So harden thine heart, O brother, and set thy brow as the brass!

This shows how liturgical repetition, sometimes echoing anaphoras19 from its scriptural origins, is fundamental to authentic Christian praxis from the beginning. If the twenty-first-century Church invests energy in using novelty and variety to counter boredom and over-familiarity among worshippers, its focus is askew; there has to be a place, and a positive value, for repetition too.

Anaphora is a storytelling device where a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive clauses and sentences. In politics Democratic and Republican leaders share one big love—anaphora.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.” “I have a dream that one day…” “I have a dream that one day…” “I have a dream today.” In the Dream Speech King puts on a master class in the use of anaphora. Anaphora is a storytelling device where a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive clauses and sentences. In politics Democratic and Republican leaders share one big love—anaphora. In January 2015 Democratic president Barack Obama asked the nation: “Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?” 6 “Will we approach the world…?” “Will we allow ourselves to be…?

This is my body, this is my blood. Take, eat, drink.…” And generations upon generations of theologians ask the same questions. How is this possible? How does this happen? And what exactly does happen in this transformation? And when exactly? And what is the cause? No answer seems to be satisfactory. Symbol? But what is a symbol? Substance, accidents? Yet one immediately feels that something is lacking in all these theories, in which the Sacrament is reduced to the categories of time, substance, and causality, the very categories of “this world.” Something is lacking because the theologian thinks of the sacrament and forgets the liturgy. As a good scientist he first isolates the object of his study, reduces it to one moment, to one “phenomenon”—and then, proceeding from the general to the particular, from the known to the unknown, he gives a definition, which in fact raises more questions than it answers. But throughout our study the main point has been that the whole liturgy is sacramental, that is, one transforming act and one ascending movement. And the very goal of this movement of ascension is to take us out of “this world” and to make us partakers of the world to come. In this world—the one that condemned Christ and by doing so has condemned itself—no bread, no wine can become the body and blood of Christ. Nothing which is a part of it can be “sacralized.” But the liturgy of the Church is always an anaphora, a lifting up, an ascension. The Church fulfills itself in heaven in that new eon which Christ has inaugurated in His death, resurrection and ascension, and which was given to the Church on the day of Pentecost as its life, as the “end” toward which it moves. In this world Christ is crucified, His body broken, and His blood shed. And we must go out of this world, we must ascend to heaven in Christ in order to become partakers of the world to come.

There are reasons for and against helping you. Reasons that a good king would think long and hard about.” Aren exhaled a long breath. “But what it comes down to is that Petra Anaphora once tried to blackmail me into killing my wife, and I think it’s long past time she paid for the offense.

Cr nn bsio t, Philaen? Calva es. Cr nn bsio t, Philaen? Rfa es. Cr nn bsio t, Philaen? Lusca es. Martial Epig. 2.33: The Epigrams are usually referenced, as here, by book and poem number; this poem, targeted at poor Philaenis, had an obscene denouement in its fourth and final verse, which I have dutifully omitted! The striking repetition, the technical term for which is ANAPHORA, was a favorite poetic and rhetorical device, typically used to achieve some sort of emphasis. Meter: hendecasyllabic, an “11-syllable” verse rhythm often employed by Catullus and Martial.

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