Euphemism Quotes

“You are a manipulator.
I like to think of myself more as an outcome engineer.”
― J.R. Ward, Lover Eternal

“You're a psychopath."
"I prefer creative.”
― Becca Fitzpatrick, Crescendo

“I'm not psycho...I just like psychotic things.”
― Gerard Way

“How is it possible to have a civil war?”
― George Carlin

“Don't ever call me mad, Mycroft. I'm not mad. I'm just ... well, differently moraled, that's all.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair

“The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”
― Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

“You're not allowed to call them dinosaurs any more," said Yo-less. "It's speciesist. You have to call them pre-petroleum persons.”
― Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Bomb

“World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.”
― Eliezer Yudkowsky, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“It's amazing--my parents call everything a discussion. If I were standing across the street, firing a bazooka at my mother, while my father was launching mortar back at me, and Jeffery was charging down the driveway with a grenade in his teeth, my parents would say we should stop having this public "discussion".”
― Jordan Sonnenblick, Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

“I don't like the word 'alcoholic'. I like to think of myself as an advanced drinker.”
― Chelsea Handler, My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

“I sense that the chocolate chips have hit the fan.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Every Other Day

“When we shrink from the sight of something, when we shroud it in euphemism, that is usually a sign of inner conflict, of unsettled hearts, a sign that something has gone wrong in our moral reasoning.”
― Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“However entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?”
― Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung's Golden Hours

“Nature is an outcry, unpolished truth; the art—a euphemism—tamed wilderness.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“Well, I'm not sure the New York Times was consciously trying to trivialise me, but the effect of it is to put everything in the same category as the gossip you read in the magazines you pick up at supermarket counters. I was asked, for example, why I thought there were so many euphemisms for genitalia. It's not a serious question. Whatever the purpose of such a tone is, the effect is to make it appear that anyone who departs from orthodox political doctrine is in some ways laughable.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Then, as on the night before, we lay down together and I proved how great our friendship had become.”
― Henry M. Christman, Gay Tales and Verses from the Arabian Nights

“Edward had a personal horror of violence and never endorsed or excused it, though in a documentary he made about the conflict he said that actions like the bombing of pilgrims at Tel Aviv airport 'did more harm than good,' which I remember thinking was (a) euphemistic and (b) a slipshod expression unworthy of a professor of English.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“When my mother passed away several years ago—well, wait a minute. Actually, she didn’t ‘pass away.’ She died. Something about that verb, ‘to pass away’ always sounds to me as if someone just drifted through the wallpaper. No, my mother did not pass away. She definitely died.”
― Steve Allen, How to Be Funny

“It was starting to seem to her that being "forward-thinking" too often involved avoiding any kind of thought at all - especially about things that might benefit from a great deal of thinking.”
― Kristin Cashore, Bitterblue

“None of the various 'language rules,' carefully contrived to deceive and to camouflage, had a more decisive effect on the mentality of the killers than this first war decree of Hitler, in which the word for 'murder' was replaced by the phrase 'to grant a mercy death.' Eichmann, asked by the police examiner if the directive to avoid 'unnecessary hardships' was not a bit ironic, in view of the fact that the destination of these people was certain death anyhow, did not even understand the question, so firmly was it still anchored in his mind that the unforgivable sin was not to kill people but to cause unnecessary pain.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

“Worryin’ is like sitting in a rockin’ chair. It don’t get you no further down the road.”
― McCaid Paul, Sweet Tea & Snap Peas

“Venus Mount”
― Stephen Arnott, Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, 1788

“Moss covered grotto”
― Stephen Arnott, Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies, 1788

“Euphemisms are used by individuals who try so hard to mince words or aren’t bold enough to say the truth or sound outrageous.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“In Hell, Nergal once tormented a murderous, deceitful soul-- one Sunderland. He spoke a secret language to disguise his crimes. In his world, assassination was cosmeticized. To kill was to 'terminate with extreme prejudice.”
― Jamie Delano, Hellblazer #6

“Euphemism is the cheapest metaphor
In the aisle of the dollar store
Along with the headless Barbies and obscure bits of bright plastic.”
― Sarah Tolmie, The Art of Dying (Volume 41)

“Demi-monde- which is French for “half-world” and an old euphemism, according to Miss Redmayne who teaches humanities, for any sexually active woman who failed to conform to the strict patriarchal gender norms that permeated French society in the dark days before Tinder.”
― Aaronovitch, Ben

“In another culture, Giuliano Marcolini might have been described as fat: Italians, however, graced with a language from which euphemism springs with endless sympathy, would describe him as 'robusto'.”
― Donna Leon, Suffer the Little Children