The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability.We say that a sentence isfactually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to 44 verify the proposition which it purports to express ö that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false.

-Ayer, SirAlfred Jules
  Language, Truth and Logic, ch.1

Never forget that if you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one.

-Brisbane, Arthur
c.1900  Quoted in Oliver Carlson Brisbane: a Candid Biography (1937), ch.5.

The declared meaning of a spoken sentence is only its overcoat, and the real meaning lies underneath its scarves and buttons.

-Carey, Peter
  Oscar and Lucinda, ch.43,'Leviathan'.

'No, no!'said the Queen.'Sentence firstöverdict afterwards.'

-Dodgson
  Alice's  Adventures in Wonderland, ch.12, 'Alice's Evidence'.

Some people tell me that we professional players are soccer slaves.Well, if this is slavery, give me a life sentence.

-Charlton, Sir Bobby (Robert)
  Quoted in Peter Ball and Phil Shaw The Book of Football Quotations (1989).

A sentence is a sound in itself on which sounds called words may be strung.

-Frost, Robert Lee
  Letter to  John Bartlett, 22 Feb.

Talking of the Comedy of 'The Rehearsal', he said 'It has not enough wit to keep it sweet.' This was easy;öhe therefore caught himself, and pronounced a more rounded sentence; 'It hasnot vitalityenoughtopreserve it from putrefaction.'

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark,  Jun. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.4.

The most important single thing in publishing is the English sentence, and the editor who cannot contemplate it again and again with a sense of wonder has not yet gained respect for the complexity of learning.

-Jovanovich,William
  Now, Barabbas.

Whatever his private behavior, the man and his work existed in different realms. Mencken's defects were commonplace; his virtues were not. So wonderfully uninhibited was his style that even a single sentence in a routine article proclaimed its begetter.

-Meyer, Karl Ernest
  Of H L Mencken. In the NewYork Times Book Review, 8 May.

I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric isgoverned by gravity.

-Moore, Marianne Craig
Quoted in Louis Untermeyer 'Five Famous Poetesses', in Ladies' Home Journal, May1964.

All my life I've beenworking on the worköevery canvas a sentence or paragraph of it. Each picture is onlyan approximation of what I want.

-Motherwell, Robert
Recalled on his death,16  Jul1991.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, And wretches hang that jury-men may dine.

-Pope, Alexander
  The Rape of the Lock, canto 3, l.21^2.

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

-Thurber,James Grover
  In the NewYork Post, 30 Jun.