Great Throughts Treasury

"Stop worrying about the 'dumbing down' of our language by bloggers, tweeters, cable-heads and MSM thumb-suckers engaged in a 'race to the bottom' of the page by little minds confined to little words."

"The CEO era gave rise to the CFO (not certified flying object, as you might imagine, but chief financial officer) and, most recently, the CIO, chief investment officer, a nice boost for the bookkeeper you can't afford to give a raise."

"The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached."

"The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking."

"The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit."

"The noun phrase straw man, now used as a compound adjective as in 'straw-man device, technique or issue,' was popularized in American culture by 'The Wizard of Oz.'"

"The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports cliché."

"The phrase New World Order is Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root F.D.R. used the phrase earlier."

"The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right."

"The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control."

"The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril."

"The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment - they're stuck with you for a long time."

"This is what it's all about. From what I could see, you could get a bunch of people together, whip up the press and have some impact."

"To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own."

"To communicate, put your words in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce."

"To ''know your place'' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say ''stay in your place'' or ''hang on to your place,'' because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place -- a feel for one's own position in the control room -- is useful in gauging what you should try to do."

"Today, war of necessity is used by critics of military action to describe unavoidable response to an attack like that on Pearl Harbor that led to our prompt, official declaration of war, while they characterize as unwise wars of choice the wars in Korea, Vietnam and the current war in Iraq."

"Took me a while to get to the point today, but that is because I did not know what the point was when I started."

"We are all environmentalists now, but we are not all planetists. An environmentalist realizes that nature has its pleasures and deserves respect. A planetist puts the earth ahead of the earthlings."

"What do you call a co-worker these days? Neither teammate nor confederate will do, and partner is too legalistic. The answer brought from academia to the political world by Henry Kissinger and now bandied in the boardroom is colleague. It has a nice upper-egalitarian feel, related to the good fellowship of collegial."

"What we don't need to know for achievement, we need to know for our pleasure. Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight."

"When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue."

"When duty calls, that is when character counts."

"When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary."

"When infuriated by an outrageous column, do not be suckered into responding with an abusive e-mail. Pundits so targeted thumb through these red-faced electronic missives with delight, saying 'Hah! Got to 'em.'"

"Fumblerules: Remember to never split an infinitive. A preposition is something never to end a sentence with. The passive voice should never be used. Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read. Don't use no double negatives. Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't. Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to agree with their subjects. No sentence fragments. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. Avoid commas, that are not necessary. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must not shift your point of view. Eschew dialect, irregardless. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. Don't overuse exclamation marks!!! Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Hyphenate between sy- llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens. Write all adverbial forms correct. Don't use contractions in formal writing. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration. Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Always pick on the correct idiom. "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'" The adverb always follows the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; They're old hat; seek viable alternatives. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do. Employ the vernacular. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary. Contractions aren't necessary. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos. One should never generalize. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." Comparisons are as bad as cliches. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous. Be more or less specific. Understatement is always best. One-word sentences? Eliminate. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms. Who needs rhetorical questions? Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement. Capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with a point."