Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases | Page 2

language, but we can refuse
to spend our days in searching for its vilest slums. --William Watson
Words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is
to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. --Max Muller
The first merit which attracts in the pages of a good writer, or the talk of a brilliant

conversationalist, is the apt choice and contrast of the words employed. It is indeed a
strange art to take these blocks rudely conceived for the purpose of the market or the bar,
and by tact of application touch them to the finest meanings and distinctions. --Robert
Louis Stevenson
It is with words as with sunbeams, the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.
--Southey
No noble or right style was ever yet founded but out of a sincere heart. --Ruskin
Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that
which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Byron
A good phrase may outweigh a poor library. --Thomas W. Higginson

PLAN OF CLASSIFICATION
SECTION I. USEFUL PHRASES II. SIGNIFICANT PHRASES III. FELICITOUS
PHRASES IV. IMPRESSIVE PHRASES V. PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES VI.
BUSINESS PHRASES VII. LITERARY EXPRESSIONS VIII. STRIKING SIMILES IX.
CONVERSATIONAL PHRASES X. PUBLIC SPEAKING PHRASES XI.
MISCELLANEOUS PHRASES

INTRODUCTION
The most powerful and the most perfect expression of thought and feeling through the
medium of oral language must be traced to the mastery of words. Nothing is better suited
to lead speakers and readers of English into an easy control of this language than the
command of the phrase that perfectly expresses the thought. Every speaker's aim is to be
heard and understood. A clear, crisp articulation holds an audience as by the spell of
some irresistible power. The choice word, the correct phrase, are instruments that may
reach the heart, and awake the soul if they fall upon the ear in melodious cadence; but if
the utterance be harsh and discordant they fail to interest, fall upon deaf ears, and are as
barren as seed sown on fallow ground. In language, nothing conduces so emphatically to
the harmony of sounds as perfect phrasing--that is, the emphasizing of the relation of
clause to clause, and of sentence to sentence by the systematic grouping of words. The
phrase consists usually of a few words which denote a single idea that forms a separate
part of a sentence. In this respect it differs from the clause, which is a short sentence that
forms a distinct part of a composition, paragraph, or discourse. Correct phrasing is
regulated by rests, such rests as do not break the continuity of a thought or the progress of
the sense.
GRENVILLE KLEISER, who has devoted years of his diligent life to imparting the art of
correct expression in speech and writing, has provided many aids for those who would
know not merely what to say, but how to say it. He has taught also what the great

HOLMES taught, that language is a temple in which the human soul is enshrined, and
that it grows out of life--out of its joys and its sorrows, its burdens and its necessities. To
him, as well as to the writer, the deep strong voice of man and the low sweet voice of
woman are never heard at finer advantage than in the earnest but mellow tones of familiar
speech. In the present volume Mr. Kleiser furnishes an additional and an exceptional aid
for those who would have a mint of phrases at their command from which to draw when
in need of the golden mean for expressing thought. Few indeed are the books fitted to-day
for the purpose of imparting this knowledge, yet two centuries ago phrase-books were
esteemed as supplements to the dictionaries, and have not by any manner of means lost
their value. The guide to familiar quotations, the index to similes, the grammars, the
readers, the machine-made letter-writer of mechanically perfect letters of congratulation
or condolence--none are sententious enough to supply the need. By the compilation of
this praxis, Mr. Kleiser has not only supplied it, but has furnished a means for the
increase of one's vocabulary by practical methods. There are thousands of persons who
may profit by the systematic study of such a book as this if they will familiarize
themselves with the author's purpose by a careful reading of the preliminary pages of his
book. To speak in public pleasingly and readily and to read well are accomplishments
acquired only after many days, weeks even, of practise.
Foreigners sometimes reproach us for the asperity and discordance of our speech, and in
general, this reproach is just, for there are many persons who do scanty justice to the
vowel-elements of our language. Although these elements constitute its music they