To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
They Say
They say women and music should never be dated.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, ‘Can he name a kitten?’
Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.
What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same.
Some Kennedy aides have always insisted that Johnson misread J.F.K.’s plans for Vietnam. They say that Kennedy had begun to rethink the U.S. presence in Indochina and was reluctant to increase it.
They say eyes clear with age.
Yes, Dan’l Webster’s dead – or, at least, they buried him. But every time there’s a thunderstorm around Marshfield, they say you can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky.
I think the NRA, they got it half-right when they say, ‘Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.’ I change it to, ‘Guns don’t kill people, Americans kill people.’
They say that shadows of deceased ghosts Do haunt the houses and the graves about, Of such whose life’s lamp went untimely out, Delighting still in their forsaken hosts.