The Elements of Eloquence Quotes

“Above all, I hope I have dispelled the bleak and imbecilic idea that the aim of writing is to express yourself clearly in plain, simple English using as few words as possible. This is a fiction, a fib, a fallacy, a fantasy and a falsehood. To write for mere utility is as foolish as to dress for mere utility.

Mountaineers do it, and climb Everest in clothes that would have you laughed out of the gutter. I suspect they also communicate quickly and efficiently, poor things. But for the rest of us, not threatened by death and yetis, clothes and language can be things of beauty. I would no more write without art because 1 didn't need to, than I would wander outdoors naked just because it was warm enough. Again.

These figures grow like wildflowers, but they can be cultivated too. I do not believe that The Beatles had any idea what anadiplosis was, any more than I believe that the Rolling Stones knew about syllepsis. They knew what worked, and it did.

The figures of rhetoric are the beauties of all the poems we have ever read. Without them we would merely be us: eating, sleeping, manufacturing and dying. With them everything can be glorious. For though we have nothing to say, we can at least say it well.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

“Browne gave to the English language the glory of the preposterously long sentence: sentences that nobody in their right minds would ever say aloud, sentences that are intricate games, filled with fine flourishes and curious convolutions. Such sentences have a remarkable quality: civilisation.

Hypotaxis is unnatural in English; nobody would ever say a sentence like the one above. You have to think calmly for a long time to come up with a good hypotactic sentence, and so a good hypotactic sentence tells the reader that you have been thinking calmly for long time. An angry drunk might shout paratactically; only a just and gentle mind can be hypotactic.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

“nobody would ever say a sentence like the one above. You have to think calmly for a long time to come up with a good hypotactic sentence, and so a good hypotactic sentence tells the reader that you have been thinking calmly for long time. An angry drunk might shout paratactically; only a just and gentle mind can be hypotactic.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

“You can spend all day trying to think of some universal truth to set down on paper, and some poets try that. Shakespeare knew that it’s much easier to string together some words beginning with the same letter. It doesn’t matter what it’s about. It can be the exact depth in the sea to which a chap’s corpse has sunk; hardly a matter of universal interest, but if you say, “Full fathom five thy father lies,” you will be considered the greatest poet who ever lived.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

“Suppose that a chap tells the girl he loves that her eyes are as green as emeralds: she’ll probably take that as a compliment, not because emeralds are green but because they’re valuable. If he tells the girl that her eyes are as green as mould, he’ll get a slap; not because he’s inaccurate but because it’s always the second, implied comparison that’s important.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

“A “peep-show box” in that more innocent age was a box with a magnifying glass in the side through which you could see little painted wonders. In the twentieth century some bright and drooling spark had the idea of putting dirty pictures inside, and eventually somebody decided to shove a whole girl in there. This is called Progress.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

“I’ve been too fucking busy, and vice versa.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase

“Malcolm X observed that: Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

“Shakespeare got better because he learnt. Now some people will tell you that great writing cannot be learnt. Such people should be hit repeatedly on the nose until they promise not to talk nonsense any more.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

“It’s rude to finish other people’s sentences, unless you killed them first.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase

“A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely.”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How To Turn the Perfect English Phrase

“Shakespeare was not a genius. He was, without the distant shadow of a doubt, the most wonderful writer who ever breathed. But not a genius. No angels handed him his lines, no fairies proofread for him. Instead, he learnt techniques, he learnt tricks, and he learnt them well. Genius,”
― Mark Forsyth, The Elements of Eloquence: How To Turn the Perfect English Phrase