Euphemism Quotes

“You are a manipulator.
I like to think of myself more as an outcome engineer.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Eternal

“You're a psychopath."
"I prefer creative.”
― Becca Fitzpatrick, Crescendo

“I'm not psycho...I just like psychotic things.”
― Gerard Way

“How is it possible to have a civil war?”
― George Carlin

“Don't ever call me mad, Mycroft. I'm not mad. I'm just ... well, differently moraled, that's all.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair

“You're not allowed to call them dinosaurs any more," said Yo-less. "It's speciesist. You have to call them pre-petroleum persons.”
― Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Bomb

“The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”
― Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

“World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“It's amazing--my parents call everything a discussion. If I were standing across the street, firing a bazooka at my mother, while my father was launching mortar back at me, and Jeffery was charging down the driveway with a grenade in his teeth, my parents would say we should stop having this public "discussion".”
― Jordan Sonnenblick, Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

“I don't like the word 'alcoholic'. I like to think of myself as an advanced drinker.”
― Chelsea Handler, My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

“I sense that the chocolate chips have hit the fan.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Every Other Day

“When we shrink from the sight of something, when we shroud it in euphemism, that is usually a sign of inner conflict, of unsettled hearts, a sign that something has gone wrong in our moral reasoning.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Nature is an outcry, unpolished truth; the art—a euphemism—tamed wilderness.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“However entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?”
― Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung's Golden Hours

“Well, I'm not sure the New York Times was consciously trying to trivialise me, but the effect of it is to put everything in the same category as the gossip you read in the magazines you pick up at supermarket counters. I was asked, for example, why I thought there were so many euphemisms for genitalia. It's not a serious question. Whatever the purpose of such a tone is, the effect is to make it appear that anyone who departs from orthodox political doctrine is in some ways laughable.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“*Prostitution* is a euphemism for rape incidents that the victim and the economy profits from.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“Then, as on the night before, we lay down together and I proved how great our friendship had become.”
― Henry M. Christman, Gay Tales and Verses from the Arabian Nights

“It was starting to seem to her that being "forward-thinking" too often involved avoiding any kind of thought at all - especially about things that might benefit from a great deal of thinking.”
― Kristin Cashore, Bitterblue

“Edward had a personal horror of violence and never endorsed or excused it, though in a documentary he made about the conflict he said that actions like the bombing of pilgrims at Tel Aviv airport 'did more harm than good,' which I remember thinking was (a) euphemistic and (b) a slipshod expression unworthy of a professor of English.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“When my mother passed away several years ago—well, wait a minute. Actually, she didn’t ‘pass away.’ She died. Something about that verb, ‘to pass away’ always sounds to me as if someone just drifted through the wallpaper. No, my mother did not pass away. She definitely died.”
― Steve Allen, How to Be Funny

“It was nice to call my parents and proudly tell them, "My lady garden is going viral." In hindsight, that may have been a poor choice of phrasing.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“They had been harboring a hatred for us which we had grown accustomed to calling “prejudice.” What a gentle word that was! What a euphemism!”
― Edith Hahn Beer a, The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust

“In many a case, the phrase ‘I’d like to get to know you better’ is a euphemism for ‘I want us to fuck.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“None of the various 'language rules,' carefully contrived to deceive and to camouflage, had a more decisive effect on the mentality of the killers than this first war decree of Hitler, in which the word for 'murder' was replaced by the phrase 'to grant a mercy death.' Eichmann, asked by the police examiner if the directive to avoid 'unnecessary hardships' was not a bit ironic, in view of the fact that the destination of these people was certain death anyhow, did not even understand the question, so firmly was it still anchored in his mind that the unforgivable sin was not to kill people but to cause unnecessary pain.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“Miss von Osterloh had looked through it once during an idle fifteen minutes and pronunce it "quite sophisticated," which veredict was her euphemism for "inhumanly boring.”
― Thomas Mann, Tristan

“Medicinal Spirit, Inside Mirror

Therapy becomes a harmony, and that harmony is built on levels,
No one knows how to upscale another, for it has to come from the inside grails,
Striking inflicts at the mirror and hatred to the being of creator,
Causes hate in mirror too and abused flesh to the author,
Changes come from its prudence and rationalism liberation,
Not its pardon,
A mirror is but a substance of a conscious,
But identity says "let me fly" when journeying from the subconscious to the conscious.”
― John Shelton Jones, Awakening Kings and Princes Volume I: Sacred Knowledge to Nourish the Mentality, Support Spiritual Growth, Learning the Light, and Progressing to Become a Master Lover While Embracing Desire

“Every now and then a green dot shifted to yellow. A soldier down, their armored suits detecting the injuries or death that rendered them combat ineffective. Combat ineffective. Such a nice euphemism for one of his kids bleeding out.”
― James S.A. Corey, The Butcher of Anderson Station

“Triumphantly, he announced their deaths to the cheering crowd in a famous one-word euphemism: vixere, 'they have lived' – that is, 'they're dead'.”
― Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome