Intending Quotes (page 5)
Very” is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of “I love you very much” or the heart-slamming intensity of “I love you”?
Florence King
Trout did another thing which some people might have considered eccentric: he called mirrors leaks. It amused him to pretend that mirrors were holes between two universes. If he saw a child near a mirror, he might wag his finger at a child warningly, and say with great solemnity, "Don't get too near that leak. You wouldent want to wind up in the other universe, would you?"Sometimes somebody would say in his presence, "Excuse me, I have to take a leak." This was a way of saying that the...
Kurt Vonnegut
Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint...They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have...
Thomas Merton
As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor.
Charlotte Bronte
So,” sneered Fudge, recovering himself, “you intend to take on Dawlish, Shacklebolt, Dolores, and myself single-handed, do you, Dumbledore?”
“Merlin’s beard, no,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “Not unless you are foolish enough to force me to.”
“He will not be single-handed!” said Professor McGonagall loudly, plunging her hand inside her robes.
“Oh yes he will, Minerva!” said Dumbledore sharply. “Hogwarts needs you!
J. K. Rowling