Best 12 quotes of Henry Watson Fowler on MyQuotes

After all, it is an ancient and valuable right of the English people to turn their nouns into verbs when they are so minded.

Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.

Be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.

It need hardly be said that shortness is a merit in words.

Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.

The obvious is better than obvious avoidance of it.

The writer's Queen Victoria is his public, and he would do well to keep a bust of the old Queen on his desk with the legend "We are not amused" hanging from it.

Those who are addicted to the phrase "to use a vulgarism" expect to achieve the feat of being at once vulgar and superior to vulgarity.

Those who run to long words are mainly the unskillful and tasteless; they confuse pomposity with dignity, flaccidity with ease, and bulk with force.

We tell our thoughts, like our children, to put on their hats and coats before they go out.

Pretentious quotations [are] the surest road to tedium.