Famous quotes containing the word minor:
“A child who fears excessive retaliation for even minor offenses will learn very early on that to lie is to protect himself.... If your child intuits that you will react very punitively to his wrongdoing, he may be tempted to lie and may become, as time goes on, a habitual liar.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“If, for instance, they have heard something from the postman, they attribute it to “a semi-official statement”; if they have fallen into conversation with a stranger at a bar, they can conscientiously describe him as “a source that has hitherto proved unimpeachable.” It is only when the journalist is reporting a whim of his own, and one to which he attaches minor importance, that he defines it as the opinion of “well-informed circles.””
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)