Readers want to visualize your story as they read it. The more exact words you give them, the more clearly they see it, smell it, hear it, taste it. Thus, a dog should be an ‘Airedale,’ not just a ‘dog.’ A taste should not be merely ‘good’ but ‘creamy and sweet’ or ‘sharply salty’ or ‘buttery on the tongue.’
Freedom is not won by merely overthrowing a tyrannical ruler or an oppressive regime. That is usually only the prelude to a new tyranny, a new oppression.
There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.
I don’t try to copy anybody – I mean, I’m not trying to become another Sinatra. I merely sing the way I speak.
In Shakespeare’s world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and truthful, or is it a demon, tempting young Hamlet into murderous sin? Is Juliet dead or merely sleeping? Does Lear really stand at the edge of a great cliff? Or has the Fool deceived him to save his life?
A moderate tax on robots, even a temporary tax that merely slows the adoption of disruptive technology, seems a natural component of a policy to address rising inequality. Revenue could be targeted toward wage insurance, to help people replaced by new technology make the transition to a different career.
Instead of isolating our school and our many subjects from the every day world, we intend to plant it not merely in the French capital, but in what for next summer at least will be the focal point, the capital of the entire civilized world.
The Toothbrush mustache is the most powerful configuration of facial hair the world has ever known. It overpowers whoever touches it. By merely doodling a Toothbrush mustache on a poster, you make a political statement.
Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams.
War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.
I will not accept a role just because a big hero stars in it. I am not here to merely dance, run around trees, and be a glam doll.
I have never understood the clamour for waif-like women whose flesh acts merely as a thin veil for their bones – much as I would love to be thinner, I would hate to take it so far that I had no actual shape at all.
I believe that our society is merely a reflection of what is going on inside each and every one of us.
When, instead of merely associating some act with some situation in the animal way, we think the situation out, we have a set of particular feelings of its elements.
What does ‘home’ really mean? Is it merely geography, where you were born? Could it include straddling two continents and cultures? Or perhaps it’s a place with a spiritual magnetism – a feeling toward a culture or people – that’s tough to put into words?
I am merely doing my best to represent the Philippines in weightlifting.
