"Reality Hunger" does contain quite a few slogan-ready phrases, but they weren't all written by Shields, and some are more than a century old.
That doesn't make it "okay," to borrow an un-nuanced, Web-ready phrase.
But there were plenty of ready-made phrases around.
Vagueness, mixed metaphor, ready-made phrases, "gumming together long strips of words", pseudo‑technical language are ways of avoiding communication.
Translators are always in danger of drifting into the sort of language that is commonly referred to as "smooth," "natural" or, as they now say, "reader friendly," but is really only a tissue of ready-made phrases.
In a similar vein, Orwell (1946) laments the "invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases," warning that "every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain".
Politicians and political writers turned "instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms," ready-made phrases that could "construct your sentences for you–even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself".
He is "not ready," a phrase employed often when blacks are up for promotion.
And: "This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases … can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain".
Have ready-made phrases in the Preset Messages.
