#phrase

The noun phrase straw man, now used as a compound adjective as in 'straw-man device, technique or issue,' was popularized in American culture by 'The Wizard of Oz.' ↗

— William Safire

#american #american culture #compound #culture #device

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase. ↗

— Stendhal

#gave #had #heard #i #i think

They should." "Should be like a wood bee," she said. It was a private joke, a mocking appreciation of the slipperiness of even the simplest hope, a nonce catchphrase like so many others lifted from favorite movies or TV shows that served as a rote substitute for conversation and bound them like shut-in twins, each other's best and, most often, only audience. ↗

— Stewart O'Nan

#conversation #hope #movies #pop-culture #tv-shows

You can still have chemistry on screen without getting on with the person. But it just makes your job a lot easier if you don't have to gird your loins, if that's not quite the right phrase, every time you're going to do a scene with that person. ↗

— Hugh Dancy

#easier #every #every time #getting #going

In my early professional years I was asking the question: How can I treat, or cure, or change this person? Now I would phrase the question in this way: How can I provide a relationship which this person may use for his own personal growth? ↗

— Carl Rogers

#change #cure #early #growth #his

Life is like a box of Hand grenades,You never know what will blow you to kingdom come ↗

— Mario Puzo

#paraphrased #simile #life

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. ↗

— Seth Grahame-Smith

#zombies #brain

I believe I am in Hell, therefore I am. ↗

— Arthur Rimbaud

#hell #paraphrased #perception #perception

Discretion is the better part of not getting exsanguinated. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#harry-dresden #paraphrased #valor #harry-dresden

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#dead #end #handsome #i #know