#phrases

There have been times when I reread - or at least leafed through - something because I'd sent a copy to a friend, and what usually happened was that I noticed dozens and dozens of clumsy phrases I wished I could rewrite. ↗

— Peter Straub

#been #clumsy #copy #could #dozens

I'm always storing away phrases and ideas and things that I think might turn into songs. ↗

— Mose Allison

#away #i #i think #ideas #into

My feeling is that the hero has now been defined by phrases like the odious one that we were all raised with - crimes does not pay. Of course it pays, you schmuck. That's not why we don't do it. We don't do it because it is wrong. ↗

— Frank Miller

#been #course #crimes #defined #does

Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#nails #similes #well-worn-phrases #christmas

[T]he wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#quotations #similes #well-worn-phrases #wisdom #simile

Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life. ↗

— Maeve Binchy

#always #any #fancy #life #phrases

You remember all those phrases about how "these people" - Asians - don't value human life like we do. Well if you spend any time around them, you discover that they love their children just as much as we love ours. That is certainly true of the Vietnamese. ↗

— Neil Sheehan

#any #around #asians #certainly #children

The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers... but in the number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds. ↗

— Thomas W. Higginson

#corner #current #found #his #merely

Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying. ↗

— David Antin

#before #between #children #distinction #frequently

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. ↗

— Ronald Reagan

#economy #few #government #keeps #moves