"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in"
(Leonard Cohen)
"Ignore all proffered rules and create your own, suitable for what you want to say"
(Michael Moorcock)
"Look for your own. Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings."
(Andre Gide)

"I want my place, my own place, my true place in the world, my proper sphere, my thing which Nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus awry, and which I have vainly sought all my life-time."
(Nathaniel Hawthorne)
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
(Franz Kafka)
"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated"
(John Donne)
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
(Robert J. Hanlon)
"Life is beautiful, but the world is hell"
(Harold Pinter)

Friday, December 24, 2010

The 100 Most Beautiful Words in English

 Perhaps.

Ailurophile  -   A cat-lover.
Assemblage -   A gathering.
Becoming   -  Attractive.
Beleaguer   -  To exhaust with attacks.
Brood   -  To think alone.
Bucolic   -  In a lovely rural setting.
Bungalow  -    A small, cozy cottage.
Chatoyant   -  Like a cat's eye.
Comely   -  Attractive.
Conflate   -  To blend together.
Cynosure   -  A focal point of admiration.
Dalliance   - A brief love affair.
Demesne  -   Dominion, territory.
Demure   -  Shy and reserved.
Denouement  -   The resolution of a mystery.
Desuetude  -   Disuse.
Desultory  -  Slow, sluggish.
Diaphanous  -   Filmy.
Dissemble   -  Deceive.
Dulcet   -  Sweet, sugary.
Ebullience  -   Bubbling enthusiasm.
Effervescent  -   Bubbly.
Efflorescence  -   Flowering, blooming.
Elision   -  Dropping a sound or syllable in a word.
Elixir   -  A good potion.
Eloquence -    Beauty and persuasion in speech.
Embrocation  -   Rubbing on a lotion.
Emollient   -  A softener.
Ephemeral   -   Short-lived.
Epiphany   -  A sudden revelation.
Erstwhile   -  At one time, for a time.
Ethereal  -   Gaseous, invisible but detectable.
Evanescent  -   Vanishing quickly, lasting a very short time.
Evocative   -  Suggestive.
Fetching  -   Pretty.
Felicity   -  Pleasantness.
Forbearance  -   Withholding response to provocation.
Fugacious   -  Fleeting.
Furtive   -  Shifty, sneaky.
Gambol   -  To skip or leap about joyfully.
Glamour   -  Beauty.
Gossamer  -   The finest piece of thread, a spider's silk
Halcyon  -   Happy, sunny, care-free.
Harbinger  -   Messenger with news of the future.
Imbrication  -   Overlapping and forming a regular pattern.
Imbroglio   -  An altercation or complicated situation.
Imbue   -  To infuse, instill.
Incipient  -   Beginning, in an early stage.
Ineffable   -  Unutterable, inexpressible.
Ingénue   -  A naïve young woman.
Inglenook  -   A cozy nook by the hearth.
Insouciance  -   Blithe nonchalance.
Inure   -  To become jaded.
Labyrinthine  -   Twisting and turning.
Lagniappe   -  A special kind of gift.
Lagoon   -  A small gulf or inlet.
Languor   -  Listlessness, inactivity.
Lassitude   -  Weariness, listlessness.
Leisure   -  Free time.
Lilt   -  To move musically or lively.
Lissome   -  Slender and graceful.
Lithe   -  Slender and flexible.
Love  -   Deep affection.
Mellifluous  -   Sweet sounding.
Moiety   -  One of two equal parts.
Mondegreen  -   A slip of the ear.
Murmurous   -  Murmuring.
Nemesis   -  An unconquerable archenemy.
Offing   -   The sea between the horizon and the offshore.
Onomatopoeia  -   A word that sounds like its meaning.
Opulent   -  Lush, luxuriant.
Palimpsest  -   A manuscript written over earlier ones.
Panacea   -  A solution for all problems
Panoply  -   A complete set.
Pastiche   -   An art work combining materials from various sources.
Penumbra  -   A half-shadow.
Petrichor   -  The smell of earth after rain.
Plethora   -  A large quantity.
Propinquity  -   An inclination.
Pyrrhic   -  Successful with heavy losses.
Quintessential  -   Most essential.
Ratatouille  -   A spicy French stew.
Ravel  -   To knit or unknit.
Redolent  -   Fragrant.
Riparian   -  By the bank of a stream.
Ripple  -   A very small wave.
Scintilla  -   A spark or very small thing.
Sempiternal  -   Eternal.
Seraglio  -   Rich, luxurious oriental palace or harem.
Serendipity  -   Finding something nice while looking for something else.
Summery   -  Light, delicate or warm and sunny.
Sumptuous  -   Lush, luxurious.
Surreptitious  -   Secretive, sneaky.
Susquehanna   -  A river in Pennsylvania.
Susurrous   -  Whispering, hissing.
Talisman   -  A good luck charm.
Tintinnabulation  -   Tinkling.
Umbrella   -  Protection from sun or rain.
Untoward   -  Unseemly, inappropriate.
Vestigial  -   In trace amounts.
Wafture   -  Waving.
Wherewithal  -   The means.
Woebegone   -  Sorrowful, downcast.


But where are - conflate, desuetude, de rigueur, efflorescence, emollient, imbroglio, insouciance, lagniappe, languor,  palimpsest, propinquity, scintilla, seraglio, kerfuffle, portentous, tendentious, rodomontade, mufti, hauteur, mellifluous, armamentarium, efficacious, cruciverbalism, sesquipedalian, stark, bright, fetch, catch, beck, burn, brook, tor, brisk, cur, coombe, cat, kind, break, crack, speak, adust, brand, good, way, far, deft, rapscallion, cloven, circuitous, piratical, melancholy, diaphanous, euphonious, reverie, dulcet, inauguration, ineffable, nefarious, obsequious, pimple, pernicious, tendentious, interlocutor, omphaloskepsis, festoon, behooves, smithereens, aegis, desultory, slow, sluggish, homunculus, mercurial, anemone, aquifer, bacilli, balm, bazaar, caravan, conjurer, dancehall, deft, eucalyptus, faraway, froth, glazier, gravelly, gypsum, harbor, hooch, impostor, inkwell, intrigue, jowl, kiosk, languid, lemony, mahogany, mariner, mineral, mystic, nebula, oyster, pamphleteer, parabola, perfunctorily, preposterous, quahog, quixotic, ramshackle, regret, saffron, satellite, scallop, schooner, scurrilous, serene, snout, souk, sultry, swagger, swizzlestick, taffy, tawdry, thalassic, tisane, tonic, trinket, tropic, tryst, ubiquity, vagabond, vainglorious, vaudeville, wanton, whelk, zinc, calamitous, oblivion, revel, tambourine, vexatious, etc.

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