Soft Imperative Form

Famous quotes containing the words soft, imperative and/or form:

    Help me to seek, for I lost it there
    And if that ye have found it, ye that be here,
    And seek to convey it secretly,
    Handle it soft and treat it tenderly,
    Or else it will plain and then appear:
    Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503?–1542)

    Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior—bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper—it’s possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother’s impending visit.
    Mary Arrigo (20th century)

    Every neurosis is a primitive form of legal proceeding in which the accused carries on the prosecution, imposes judgment and executes the sentence: all to the end that someone else should not perform the same process.
    Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)