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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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 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

“True freedom of speech includes the freedom to call someone a bitch.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“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

“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

“Language, George Orwell reminds us, is always political. It can be used to “make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” The euphemism, he wrote, is the weapon of choice: "Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.”
― David Correia, Police: A Field Guide

“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

“I grin. “It’s just a party,” I assure her. “Nothin’ big.”

“There ain’t nothin’ that happens on this ranch that’s organized by your mama that ain’t big. That woman’s about as subtle as a shotgun.”

“A shotgun can be subtle if it ain’t bein’ fired,” I point out.

She narrows her eyes. I think she’s about to quip back with something super sassy, but then a smile wrinkles up her face. “You sayin’ I’m better off to keep the shotgun from firin’?”

“I’m sayin’ quit playin’ with the trigger, Grandma.”
― Daryl Banner, Football Sundae

“Come," he said gently, for he knew she'd been through travail. "I sought you out amongst your labors to bend my knee and plead that you leave the dust and spiders and mouse droppings to come and lounge awhile and perhaps partake of luncheon."
Interestingly, she blushed. "I can't do that," she hissed under her breath.
"Why not?" he asked, deeply diverted by her reaction.
"The other servants."
He blinked. "I assure you, I do let all my servants partake of luncheon."
"But if I am with you..." Her blush deepened.
He cocked his head, studying her, entirely baffled. "I didn't mean luncheon as a euphemism; however, I'm entirely happy to adjourn to my rooms right at this moment if that is-"
"No," she said with what some might take as unflattering emphasis. She rolled her eyes as if he were the one being difficult, which, to be fair, he often was. "Let's go have luncheon."
He smiled. "Splendid!"
She looked at him a little shyly. Absolutely enchanting. "I'm dusty. I'll go wash first and meet you in the dining room, shall I?"
He bowed with a flourish. "I await your presence."
She looked flustered at that and he was very tempted to perhaps lean her up against one of the tables and-”
― Elizabeth Hoyt, Duke of Sin

“Venus Mount”
― Stephen Arnott, Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, 1788

“Moss covered grotto”
― Stephen Arnott, Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, 1788

“Euphemisms are used by individuals who try so hard to mince words or aren’t bold enough to say the truth or sound outrageous.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes