Euphemisms

The ultimate in shabby chic

I am collecting euphemisms and dysphemisms into an ebook to be called Boo and Hooray! But I have removed quite a few quotes due to copyright concerns. Here's a few for starters:

“As Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee put it: ‘No story is fair if reporters hide their biases and emotions behind such subtly pejorative words as refused, despite, admit and massive’.” (Guardian style guide)

“So what do we think of terms like upcycle, vintique, shabby chic etc? Was it better when we just had antique, second-hand, painted etc?” (antique dealer George Johnson/‏@LadyKentmores)
 
“Language betrays values.” (Carlo Caponecchia)

"Now the housing crisis. I am not meant to say crisis now I work for the minister but hell's teeth a crisis is a crisis." (Emily Wright on Twitter)

CONFIDENCE
Confidence is like character and personality, it’s code for having remade yourself to society’s requirements. (Lorraine Pascale on ITV)

“They learn to talk in a polite way to someone senior and that gives them confidence.” They learn to bullshit? “Yeah. That’s the art of confidence.” (The Times, March 19 2008)

“Employers put social skills ahead of degrees. Employers are increasingly spurning degrees when hiring staff, a study has found. Instead, they are looking for candidates to be ‘well turned out’, ‘ well-spoken’ and [have] ‘good manners’.” (The Daily Mail, January 17, 2004)

DIPLOMACY
A friend writes:

I couldn't agree with you more: There may be something in what
you say.

There may be something in what you say: There is no way I could agree with that.

How very interesting!: Now you are talking complete bullshit.

MENTAL HEALTH
“19th century doctor Bernhard von Gudden [realised] that so-called ‘moral treatment’, which often involved inflicting violence on mental health patients, wasn't perhaps the best curative regimen.” (Der Spiegel, January 2014)

Normal minds are as rare as normal eyesight. (Muriel Jaeger, Before Victoria If “normal eyesight” is rare, then it isn’t normal.)


"Attacked viciously by atheists" = Received a lot of tweets (Donovan/‏@MrOzAtheist)

“By ‘moral relativism’ [the Catholic Church means] "not unquestioningly accepting our primacy in moral affairs." (JP)

“Why are Christians being so oppressed?” = “Why aren’t we getting everything our way like the good old days?” Robin Ince, blog, Jan 15 2014

ARGUMENTS“I've learned from years of having ideas & opinions that when someone says 'everyone has an opinion' they usually want to stop hearing yours.” (@MarkOneinFour)

"Let's not bring politics into this" always seems to mean "Let's all agree with what I say." (Andy Shaw/@RedAndy54)

“People who say they like to see orthodoxies challenged mean they like to see other peoples' orthodoxies challenged and their own confirmed.” (Frankie Boyle)

“This new thing of calling anyone who opposes you or sticks up for themselves 'aggressive'.” (@ShappiKhorsandi)

"God works in Mysterious ways = I'm making this up as I go along, please stop asking difficult questions." (Donovan/@MrOzAtheist)

“Closed-minded skeptics are merely debunkers.” (via Chris French. Means “they disagree with us”.)

More here.

Meaningless Uplift

Pseudo-profundities - what Daniel Dennett calls "deepities". And I bet Einstein and Lincoln never said any of them.

Create your own from these templates:
X is Y.
True X is Y.
There are no X, only Y.
The X is the Y.
True greatness lies in…
True happiness is…
Genius is...

What is life?
The purpose of life is to fight maturity.
The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose.
The purpose of life is to live it.
Catholics believe that the purpose of life is to have life and have it more abundantly.
Life begets life. Energy creates energy.
You have to meet life on life’s terms. (Geri Halliwell)


After a visit to the beach, it's hard to believe that we live in a material world. (Pam Shaw. What does she think sand is made of? Let alone air, water and seaweed.)

And all the losers, can't even win for losing And the beginners don't even know what song they're singing.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. (Soren Kierkegaard)

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.

Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It’s our goal in life to find it and keep it lit. (Mary Lou Retton)

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. (Thoreau)

Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves. (Germaine Greer)

Identity is not just about who you are and where you've come from but is also about your possibility of becoming.

If you touch one thing with deep awareness, you touch everything. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Intelligence without ambition is like a bird without wings. (C. Archie Danielson)

It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich. (Sarah Bernhardt)

It is by suffering that human beings become angels. (Victor Hugo)

It is love alone that leads to right action. (Jiddu Krishnamurti And research, and planning…)

Leap, and the net will appear. (John Burroughs)

Only a life lived for others is a life worth living. (Albert Einstein)

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be. (Abraham Lincoln)

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. (John Maeda)

Simplify your language and thereby find your humanity.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

There is no cause, only effect. (Erich Heller, a philosopher Kenneth Williams liked to quote.)

Things do not change; we change. (Henry David Thoreau)

To be fully alive is to be in the flow of change and transformation. (Deepak Chopra)

Until we extend the circle of compassion to everything, we won't find peace. (Albert Schweitzer)

When you stop chasing the wrong things the right things catch you.

You are as precious as the love you feel for others.


And here are some more duff definitions:
A city without a library is a graveyard. (Malala Yousafzai at the opening of the new Birmingham Library)

A library is an act of faith. (Victor Hugo)

Destroyers are those who hoard resources.

Elections are a form of tyranny. (Colonel Gaddafi)

Fairness means giving people what they deserve, Cameron to tell Tory conference

Fashion is instant language. (Miuccia Prada)

Freedom is slavery. (George Orwell, 1984)

Hope equals resignation. And to live is not to resign oneself. (Albert Camus)

Humility is attentive patience. (Simone Weil)

I was experiencing Hell, which is being imprisoned in the limitations of my ego. (Malcolm Muggeridge And if Hell is other people or being separated from God, what’s with all those paintings of flames and devils and pitchforks?)

It’s those who feed hate into children’s minds who are the real perverts. (Martha Plimpton)

Journalism is an act of faith in the future.

Language is power.

Making others happy through kindness of speech and sincerity of advice is a sign of true greatness. (Paramahansa Yogananda)

Marriage is a two-way street leading to one destination - God.

Moralism is the greatest form of self-worship.

Peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.

Poverty is the worst form of violence. (Gandhi)

Property is theft.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. (Richard Dawkins)

True beauty is found in people and things that are truly genuine from the soul. (And many, many more. But before I had the nose-job nobody was interested in my soul.)

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens. (Kahlil Gibran)

Socialism is slavery. (Lord Acton)

Sustainability is another word for justice, for what is just is sustainable and what is unjust is not. (Matthew Fox)

The good is the beautiful. (Plato)

The ideological reading of ‘gender’ is a true dictatorship. (Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco)

The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck. (Tony Robbins)

There is no wealth but life. (John Ruskin)

To banish imperfection is to destroy expression. (John Ruskin)

To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart, and to sing it to them when they have forgotten.

Tolerance means, literally, to engage with other people who are different. (Tim Radcliffe in the Guardian, Dec 2012)

True patience is not passive, but active. (James Freeman Clarke)

Work that is done for fear of poverty, is tyranny. (Prudhon)

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. (Kahlil Gibran)

Quietist Proverbs here.
Unhelpful Advice here.