Expressive Pronouns Quotes

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There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets `things' with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns `my' and `mine' look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine)
Younger people could dredge up an impressive number of dark words to express their pain. As writers got older and older, their negative emotion vocabulary diminished and their positive emotion word count skyrocketed. As
James W. Pennebaker (The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us)
As American English speakers, we are perfectly at liberty to use whatever language we want; we just have to know that our words reveal our social and moral beliefs to some extent. So if one were to use the term comedienne instead of comic or the pronoun she to describe a Ferrari, they could be opening themselves up to criticism, not for flat-out sexism but definitely for expressing an indifference to gender equality. What rubs people the wrong way about political correctness is not that they can’t use certain words anymore, it’s that political neutrality is no longer an option.
Amanda Montell (Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language)
so that one has to say ‘I/we/Gaia’ as an invented pronoun to express the inexpressible.
Isaac Asimov (Foundation and Earth (Foundation, #5))
We go to great lengths to deny our animal heritage, and not just in scientific and philosophical discourse. You can glimpse the denial in the shaving of men’s faces; in clothing and other adornments; in the great lengths gone to in the preparation of meat to disguise the fact that an animal is being killed, flayed, and eaten. The common primate practice of pseudosexual mounting of males by males to express dominance is not widespread in humans, and some have taken comfort from this fact. But the most potent form of verbal abuse in English and many other languages is “Fuck you,” with the pronoun “I” implicit at the beginning. The speaker is vividly asserting his claim to higher status, and his contempt for those he considers subordinate. Characteristically, humans have converted a postural image into a linguistic one with barely a change in nuance. The phrase is uttered millions of times each day, all over the planet, with hardly anyone stopping to think what it means. Often, it escapes our lips unbidden. It is satisfying to say. It serves its purpose. It is a badge of the primate order, revealing something of our nature despite all our denials and pretensions.
Carl Sagan (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors)
Tables of Contents Introduction Chapter 1 Bonjour, France! Chapter 2 Numbers and Gender Chapter 3 Plural Forms of Nouns Chapter 4 Pronouns Chapter 5 Verbs Chapter 6 Prepositions Chapter 7 Useful Expressions Preview Of‘Spanish For Beginners’ Check Out My Other Books Conclusion
Manuel De Cortes (French: French For Beginners: A Practical Guide to Learn the Basics of French in 10 Days! (Italian, Learn Italian, Learn Spanish, Spanish, Learn French, French, German, Learn German, Language))
A Sumerian word like munintuma’a (‘when he had made it suitable for her’) might seem rather trim compared to the Turkish colossus above. What is so impressive about it, however, is not its lengthiness, but rather the reverse: the thrifty compactness of its construction. The word is made up of different ‘slots’ , each corresponding to a particular portion of meaning. This sleek design allows single sounds to convey useful information, and in fact even the absence of a sound has been enlisted to express something specific. If you were to ask which bit in the Sumerian word corresponds to the pronoun ‘it’ in the English translation ‘when he had made it suitable for her’, then the answer would have to be … nothing. Mind you, a very particular kind of nothing: the nothing that stands in the empty slot in the middle. The technology is so fine-tuned, then, that even a non-sound, when carefully placed in a particular position, has been invested with a specific function. Who could possibly have come up with such a nifty contraption?
Guy Deutscher (The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention)
The first step in handling turbulent feelings is to identify them clearly by name. This gives a warning to whomever it may concern to make amends or to take precautions. We do this by starting with the pronoun I: “I feel annoyed.” Or “I feel irritated.” If our short statements and long faces have not brought relief, we proceed to the second step. We express our anger with increasing intensity: “I feel angry.” “I feel very angry.” “I feel very, very angry.” “I feel furious.” Sometimes the mere statement of our feelings (without explanations) stops the child from misbehaving. At other times it may be necessary to proceed to the third step, which is to give the reason for our anger, to state our inner reactions and our wishful actions: “When I see the shoes and the socks and the shirts and the sweaters spread all over the floor, I get angry, I get furious. I feel like opening the window and throwing the whole mess into the middle of the street.” “It makes me angry to see you hit your brother. I get so mad inside myself that I see red. I start boiling. I can never allow you to hurt him.” “When I see all of you rush away from dinner to watch TV, and leave me with the dirty dishes and greasy pans, I feel indignant! I get so mad, I fume inside! I feel like taking all the dishes and breaking them on the TV set!” “When I call you for dinner and you don't come, I get angry. I get very angry. I say to myself, ‘I cooked a good meal and I want some appreciation, not frustration!
Haim G. Ginott (Between Parent and Child)
was a commonplace among his colleagues—especially the younger ones—that he was a “dedicated” teacher, a term they used half in envy and half in contempt, one whose dedication blinded him to anything that went on outside the classroom or, at the most, outside the halls of the University. There were mild jokes: after a departmental meeting at which Stoner had spoken bluntly about some recent experiments in the teaching of grammar, a young instructor remarked that “To Stoner, copulation is restricted to verbs,” and was surprised at the quality of laughter and meaningful looks exchanged by some of the older men. Someone else once said, “Old Stoner thinks that WPA stands for Wrong Pronoun Antecedent,” and was gratified to learn that his witticism gained some currency. But William Stoner knew of the world in a way that few of his younger colleagues could understand. Deep in him, beneath his memory, was the knowledge of hardship and hunger and endurance and pain. Though he seldom thought of his early years on the Booneville farm, there was always near his consciousness the blood knowledge of his inheritance, given him by forefathers whose lives were obscure and hard and stoical and whose common ethic was to present to an oppressive world faces that were expressionless and hard and bleak. And though he looked upon them with apparent impassivity, he was aware of the times in which he lived. During that decade when many men’s faces found a permanent hardness and bleakness, as if they looked upon an abyss, William Stoner, to whom that expression was as familiar as the air he walked in, saw the signs of a general despair he had known since he was a boy. He saw good men go down into a slow decline of hopelessness, broken as their vision of a decent life was broken; he saw them walking aimlessly upon the streets, their eyes empty like shards of broken glass; he saw them walk up to back doors, with the bitter pride of men who go to their executions, and beg for the bread that would allow them to beg again; and he saw men, who had once walked erect
John Williams (Stoner)
It’s not that I don’t want to wear my femme clothes to work; it’s that I know as soon as I do, my entire nonbinary identity will be disregarded. I won’t be seen as “trans enough”—my clothes will give people permission to treat me like a woman or feel entitled to use the wrong pronouns. Even people who claim to be accepting of nonbinary gender still expect that our expression must deviate from the norms associated with our sex assigned at birth.
Micah Rajunov (Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity)
Core words are the most frequently used words in communication. Studies in which researchers analyze language samples from different populations and contexts have shown that there are approximately three hundred to four hundred words that make up about 80 percent of everything we say.20 Core words are typically verbs, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, and prepositions. The most effective AAC systems are set up to teach core vocabulary first “because it allows communicators to express a wide variety of concepts with a very small number of words. Since core words make up the majority of spoken language, focusing on core vocabulary allows many opportunities throughout the day to hear the same words being used in a natural environment.”21 Using core words sets the learner up for their best communication success.
Christina Hunger (How Stella Learned to Talk: The Groundbreaking Story of the World's First Talking Dog)
What is the same in every human being and doesn't change? [...] That you exist. The words we use to express this concept are "I am." "I" is the pronoun we use to reference the self. "Am" is the verb that references a state of being. "I am" indicates self-awareness of being. In the space between all words, all thoughts, all memories, what do you know with certainty? "I exist and I am aware of it." When stating, "I am", all self-aware beings are referring to an identical experience. [...] No matter one's age or life history, "I am" - the awareness of being - is a shared phenomenon. [This is] the part of you beyond your story. Think of "I am" like the vast open sky. Any words that follow "I am" are clouds. They arise within the sky, temporarily changing the appearance of it, but they have no effect on the sky's basic existence. Who are you beyond your story? You are the open sky my friend - the presence and expression of an immense Awareness that knows it exists. Because this is a shared presence, it's more fitting to refer to this as the Absolute Self (with a capital S) as opposed to the temporary, limited sense of "my" self with a story. [...] In the Bible, in the Book of Exodus, the story goes that when Moses asked for God's name, the first response he received was, "I AM that I AM." So we have the Absolute "I AM" that is everywhere, all-knowing, and all-powerful. And we have over seven billion relative beings also claiming "I am." The difference between relative awareness and Absolute Awareness is the individual stories or exeriences that arise in the one I AM Awareness, like clouds in the sky. The Self is the sky. The selves are the clouds. You are not apart from the sky. You are intimately part of it as a self-aware expression fo self-awareness.
Suzanne Giesemann (The Awakened Way: Making the Shift to a Divinely Guided Life)
This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets "things" with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns "my" and "mine" look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution.
A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)
There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets “things” with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns “my” and “mine” look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do.
A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)
The pronouns “my” and “mine” look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do.
A.W. Tozer (The Pursuit of God)
People who benefit from writing express more optimism, acknowledge negative events, are constructing a meaningful story of their experience, and have the ability to change perspectives as they write.
James W. Pennebaker (The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us)
This creature ascribes its behavior to things it refers to as its desires or its wants, but it can’t say exactly why it has those desires. At a certain point there is no further possibility of analysis or articulation; those desires simply are there, and to the creature, they seem to be the root causes for its decisions, actions, motions. And always, inside the sentences that express why it does what it does, there is the pronoun “I” (or its cousins “me”, “my”, etc.). It seems that the buck stops there — with the so-called “I”.
Douglas R. Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop)
The most common prepositional error is forgetting that the noun or pronoun in a prepositional phrase is the object of the preposition. The object of the preposition must be expressed in the objective case. Who can forget Jane Russell’s line, in a 1970s Playtex ad, for a bra “for we full-figured gals.” The preposition for mandates the pronoun us. But, then, Russell never was known for her pronouns.
Constance Hale (Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wicked Good Prose)
Once I started reading up on the third Person of the Trinity, I discovered how many theologians were ahead of me.2 The feminine pronoun is not as important to all of them as it is to me, but the idea of divine multiplicity is—the idea that one God can answer to more than one name and assume more than one form. Even if Christians will not go higher than three, the case is made: unity expresses itself in diversity. The One who comes to us in more than one way is free to surprise us in all kinds of ways. This is especially meaningful to people like me, who mean to hang on to our singular Christian identity with one hand and our love of many neighbors with the other. Within the community of the Trinity, the one and the many do not cancel each other out. They lean toward one another in eternally circling, mutually inclusive love. That is the image in which the rest of us are made.
Barbara Brown Taylor (Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others)