“My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules: (1) Avoid alliteration. Always(2) Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.(3) Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.)(4) Employ the vernacular.(5) Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.(6) Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.(7) It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.(8) Contractions aren't necessary.(9) Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.(10) One should never generalize.(11) Eliminate quotations. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."(12) Comparisons are as bad as clichés.(13) Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.(14) Profanity sucks.(15) Be more or less specific.(16) Understatement is always best.(17) Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.(18) One-word sentences? Eliminate.(19) Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.(20) The passive voice is to be avoided.(21) Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.(22) Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.(23) Who needs rhetorical questions?””
Quotes by Waldo Frank
“Enemies must have common ground. Else, they are not enemies but strangers.””
“I am weary with whiteness. To rule, to be civilized and chaste; you do not know what weariness it is. My woman yearns toward me in hunger, I am spent. All the world waves in darkling circles about my white uprightness, I am spent.””
“Smiles, smiles”
“The farm, the farm is the right school.... The reason for my deep respect for the farmer is that he is a realist, and not a dictionary. The farm is a piece of the world… The farm, by training the physical, rectifies and invigorates the metaphysical and moral nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson Diary September 14, 1839””
Waldo Frank was an American novelist, essayist, and cultural critic known for his exploration of American identity and the human experience in the early 20th century. Born in New Jersey, Frank's liter...