OMISSION in sample sentences

I’m a big fan of the lie of omission.

Gillian Flynn -- Gone Girl

It is a lie of omission, but I long ago convinced myself that it was the right thing to do.

Nicholas Sparks -- The Longest Ride

Incomplete information creates gaps in our knowledge, and medically speaking, gaps in our knowledge create mistakes and omissions.

Dave Eggers -- The Circle

I took no weapons of any kind, although there were times when I regretted this omission, even if only fleetingly.

Farley Mowat -- Never Cry Wolf

If I tell Ma and Dad everything except about the deer, that’s lying by omission, Ma says: not telling the whole truth.

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor -- Shiloh

That omission was our own past, the smashed life of our community.

V.S. Naipaul -- A Bend in the River

Show more again

To the guilt which was murdering her just as surely as her children were murdered must there now be added my own guilt for committing the sin of blind omission that might help seal her doom as certainly as Nathan’s own hands?

William Styron -- Sophie’s Choice

I came to the rocky conclusion that a lie of omission was the only way to go.

Becca Fitzpatrick -- Hush, Hush

You mean, since the houses are fairly new, nothing was buried under them, and the inhabitants are now remedying the omission.

Diana Gabaldon -- Outlander

I hope readers will forgive any omissions.

Rebecca Skloot -- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I am merely filling in the omissions.

Ayn Rand -- The Fountainhead

Even Lon was ignored, and though both of them noticed the omission, neither mentioned it.

Nicholas Sparks -- The Notebook

Jack had meant to leave him in doubt, as an assertion of power; but Piggy by advertising his omission made more cruelty necessary.

William Golding -- Lord of the Flies

I noticed that he made no reference to the funeral, and this seemed to me a serious omission.

Albert Camus -- The Stranger

I rationalized the omission: There was no point getting all worked up about a kiss.

Gayle Forman -- If I Stay

Having given orders in the commander in chief’s name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew galloped back.

Leo Tolstoy -- War and Peace

But Mobutu was just getting organized in ’61, and still given to peculiar omissions.

Barbara Kingsolver -- The Poisonwood Bible

Tom turned in without the added vexation of prayers, and Sid made mental note of the omission.

Mark Twain -- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

D’Artagnan related his story simply, with the omission of names.

Alexandre Dumas -- The Three Musketeers

My father’s voice rose: ’Lord, we have sinned in omission.

John Wyndham -- The Chrysalids

Not once during this interview, now almost three hours old, had either of them mentioned murder-an omission that kept the prisoner edgy, expectant.

Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood

Deep down, though, I could suddenly feel the weight of all my withholding, so many lies and omissions.

Sarah Dessen -- Just Listen

She could have forgiven all the omissions, but one: Dagny showed no sign of interest in men, no romantic inclination whatever.

Ayn Rand -- Atlas Shrugged

And will you consent to dispense with a great many conventional forms and phrases, without thinking that the omission arises from insolence?

Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre

Let him stay that way, the colonel decided vindictively, just to show him who was boss and to safeguard himself against any loss of dignity that might devolve from his acknowledging the omission.

Joseph Heller -- Catch-22

There would have been a species of profanity in the omission, had this man passed so powerful a community of his fancied kindred, without bestowing some evidence of his regard.

James Fenimore Cooper -- The Last of the Mohicans

’My response is being written with ink and paper in the glorious tradition of our ancestors and then transcribed by Ms. Vliegenthart into a series of 1s and 0s to travel through the insipid web which has lately ensnared our species, so I apologize for any errors or omissions that may result.

John Green -- The Fault in Our Stars

It is on her account that attention to Randalls is doubly due, and she must doubly feel the omission.

Jane Austen -- Emma

Once she would have thought this omission a mortal sin but, somehow, staying away from church did not seem so sinful now as it formerly had.

Margaret Mitchell -- Gone with the Wind

No crime of commission was ever attributed to him, and his crimes of omission were only misdemeanors.

John Steinbeck -- East of Eden

Thus they denote the folly of a servant, an omission of a child, a stone that cuts their feet, a continuance of foul or unseasonable weather, and the like, by adding to each the epithet of Yahoo.

Jonathan Swift -- Gulliver’s Travels

Paul sat reflectively for a moment, re-read the last line (mentally filling in the omissions), and then simply went back to work.

Stephen King -- Misery

Well, if I didn’t I made a serious omission.

Tennessee Williams -- A Streetcar Named Desire

A circle of students formed round the table, and they spoke of the nonsense paid for by the State which was uttered from the rostrum in the Sorbonne, then the conversation fell upon the faults and omissions in Guicherat’s dictionaries and grammars.

Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables

This is an omission indeed, given how much I enjoyed yesterday’s motoring.

Kazuo Ishiguro -- The Remains of the Day

The pure air, and the long summer hours in the open, gave back life and elasticity to Mattie, and Zeena, with more leisure to devote to her complex ailments, grew less watchful of the girl’s omissions; so that Ethan, struggling on under the burden of his barren farm and failing saw-mill, could at least imagine that peace reigned in his house.

Edith Wharton -- Ethan Frome

The doctor and his wife, uncle and aunt Kimble, were there, and the annual Christmas talk was carried through without any omissions, rising to the climax of Mr. Kimble’s experience when he walked the London hospitals thirty years back, together with striking professional anecdotes then gathered.

George Eliot -- Silas Marner

Now he was smitten with compunction, yet irritated that so trifling an omission should be stored up against him after nearly two years of marriage.

Edith Wharton -- The Age of Innocence

Izz mentioned the omission of the banns to Mrs Crick, and Mrs Crick assumed a matron’s privilege of speaking to Angel on the point.

Thomas Hardy -- Tess of the d’Urbervilles

M. Vinteuil did not send his daughter to visit Swann, an omission which Swann was the first to regret.

Marcel Proust -- Swann’s Way

Mr. Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission.

George Eliot -- The Mill on the Floss

It was a fatal omission of Boldwood’s that he had never once told her she was beautiful.

Thomas Hardy -- Far from the Madding Crowd

Such omissions of devotion, of affection, she knows now, do not matter in the end.

Jhumpa Lahiri -- The Namesake

Yet General Steyn oppressed us by omission rather than commission.

Nelson Mandela -- Long Walk to Freedom

What are the methods of commission or omission that censorship employs? I analyze my own experiences for answers.

Rudolfo Anaya -- Take the Tortillas out of Your Poetry

The Will In Deliberation, the last Appetite, or Aversion, immediately adhaering to the action, or to the omission thereof, is that wee call the WILL; the Act, (not the faculty,) of Willing.

Thomas Hobbes -- Leviathan