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1 " I'm infatuated with you, I cannot deny it. Physically speaking, you're a very attractive man. But I don't like you, the vast majority of the time. So far as I can gather, you behave abominably in public and are only marginally better in private. I only find you remotely tolerable when you're kissing me. "
― Tessa Dare , One Dance with a Duke (Stud Club, #1)
2 " . . . Mrs. Arcanum considered foreign parts only marginally less unspeakable than private parts. . . "
3 " As my muscles marginally relax, the tension flicks from anger to fevered desire. I want to tear each wisp of clothing off her and tie her to this f**king desk. I’ll know next time, to bring my satin ribbon. "
― M.R. Field , Fractures (Running On Empty #3)
4 " I am always impressed by the fact that even the tiniest amount of being listened to, the barest suggestion of the possibility of kind treatment, can bring such an immediate rush of emotion. I think this is because we are almost never really listened to. In my work as a psychologist, I am reminded every day of how infrequently we are heard, any of us, or our actions even marginally understood. And one of the ironies of my " listening profession" is its lesson that, in many ways, each of us ultimately remains a mystery to everyone else. "
5 " No critic and advocate of immutability has ever once managed properly or even marginally to outwit the English language's capacity for foxy and relentlessly slippery flexibility. For English is a language that simply cannot be fixed, not can its use ever be absolutely laid down. It changes constantly; it grows with an almost exponential joy. It evolves eternally; its words alter their senses and their meanings subtly, slowly, or speedily according to fashion and need. "
― Simon Winchester , The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
6 " Yet in reality, the likelihood of reaching the pinnacle of capitalist society today is only marginally better than were the chances of being accepted into the French nobility four centuries ago, though at least an aristocratic age was franker, and therefore kinder, about the odds. It did not relentlessly play up the possibilities open to all those with a take on the future of the potato crisp, and so, in turn, did not cruelly equate an ordinary life with a failed one.Our era is perverse in passing off an exception as a rule. "
― Alain de Botton , The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
7 " When a group of people are forced to navigate a minefield together, everyone feels a grudging sense of comfort when someone else gets blown up. Though there may be other unseen landmines left in the ground, each death creates a safe spot. A landmine cannot explode twice in the same place. Sure, the explosion robs the survivors of a comrade. Still, each death makes everyone’s next step marginally safer. So everyone keeps walking with grief on their faces, and relief in their hearts. Their own deaths are further postponed by the end of another life. "
― Taona Dumisani Chiveneko , The Hangman's Replacement: Sprout of Disruption
8 " You do know you’re one of the hot ones, right? You could have any dom in this room if you looked marginally more approachable than an underfed piranha having a bad day. "
― Alexis Hall , For Real (Spires, #3)
9 " I, on the contrary, have been convinced for some time that perfection is not produced except marginally and by chance; therefore it deserves no interest at all, the true nature of things being revealed only in disintegration. "
― Italo Calvino , If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
10 " You sometimes heard about the marginally talented wives of powerful men publishing children's books or designing handbags or, most commonly, becoming photographers. There might even be a show of the wife's work in a well-known but slightly off gallery. Everyone would come see it, and they would treat the wife with unctuous respect. Her photographs of celebrities without makeup, and seascapes, and street people, would be enormous, as though size and great equipment could make up for whatever else was missing. "
― Meg Wolitzer , The Interestings
