Embellish Quotes & Sayings

embellish your flaws — Marie Lu

You were playing the song we like..."
"That was the song?" A smile lit his face.
"Yes. What was it?" I asked
"Bob Dylan."
"What?!" I wailed. "I thought it was going to be Beethoven or something. Now I know I'm white trash."
Wilson bopped me on the head with his bow. "It's called 'Make You Feel my Love.' It's one of my favorite songs. I embellish it a bit, but it's all Dylan, definitely not Mozart. The lyrics are brilliant. Listen." Wilson sang softly as he played. His voice was as rich as the moaning cello .
"Of course," I said sourly.
"What?" Wilson stopped, startled.
"You can sing. You have a beautiful voice. I can't even pretend that you suck. Why can't you suck at something? It's so unfair."
"You clearly haven't seen me try to carve something intricate and beautiful out of a tree stump," Wilson said dryly, and started playing again. — Amy Harmon

When you meet someone, you meet their face. It's the most potent part of the body to embellish. — Philip Treacy

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but - mainly - to ourselves. — Julian Barnes

Writers of fiction embellish reality almost without knowing it. — Aljean Harmetz

People do ask, 'Are you going to embellish this stuff?' I wouldn't change any of my guitar parts. — Joey Santiago

Autocracy cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest, the first to suppress popular resistance by force, the second to sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom. — Vladimir Lenin

With writing, I think you have to be honest with yourself. I have a certain kind of writing; that is, I like to really embellish the human spirit. You have to write about something you have a feel for. — Sylvester Stallone

My hair is an untidy bob. I am very dark, but I embellish the roots because I am white in one clump. — Erin O'Connor

But the shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, unadapted, and awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but convention forbids! — C. G. Jung

But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted. — Anais Nin

I believe how you looked was supposed to mean, something graver, more substantial: I'd gaze at my poor face and think, "It's still not there." Apparently I still do. What isn't there? Beauty? Not likely. Wisdom? Less. Is how we live or try to live supposed to embellish us? All I see is the residue of my other, failed faces.
But maybe what we're after is just a less abrasive regard: not "It's still not there," but something like "Come in, be still. — C. K. Williams

Great art must not be sullied by politics. One would never, after all, seek to embellish the Mona Lisa, not even with a swastika. — Timur Vermes

Dreams get shattered, hopes are belied, aspirations delude and opportunities elude us. Clouds have the power to conceal the sunshine and our radiance fails to ignite positive thoughts unless we embellish our thoughts and emotions, which can be trained to veer into a positive direction. — Balroop Singh

I'm sure you have a theme: the theme of your life. You can embellish it or desecrate it, but it's your theme, and as long as you follow it, you will experience harmony and peace of mind. — Agatha Christie

What I think I know about dating is that you can't take back something you say in a date. You can't lie, and you can't pretend to be someone you're not unless it's not going well and you never see them again. It never works if you try to make yourself seem like someone you're not, and you want to keep dating them. Be yourself. Don't embellish. It will always come back to get you. — Michael Urie

Different boards do different things to the sound that's coming through them. An old Neve desk does embellish it in a way that makes it sound sort of bigger or warmer. It doesn't change the performance but it does enhance the way that it sounds. — Dave Grohl

Once you find the right idea, then go ahead and embellish it. — Vincente Minnelli

And think about the precise meaning of that term: a Narcissus is not proud. A proud man has disdain for other people, he undervalues them. The Narcissus overvalues them, because in every person's eyes he sees his own image, and wants to embellish it. So he takes nice care of all his mirrors. — Milan Kundera

Obduracy can be overcome by determination. More insidious, and far harder to destroy, was women's internalizing of the notion that they were somehow inferior to men, a complementary species designed (in W.R. Greg's words) to 'complet[e], sweeten, and embellish the existence of others'. [Women] still chose to become nurses rather than doctors, secretaries rather than bosses: to be ill-paid facilitators for people no more talented nor, in many cases, better educated than themselves, but who simply happened to be men. The notion that they might be their bosses' equals penetrated only very slowly; the possibility that they might even be their superiors, though accepted in theory, has perhaps still not wholly sunk in. — Ruth Brandon

Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters. — Cassandra Clare

Song of the rain
iam dotted silverthreads dropped from heaven by the gods ,nature then takes me to adornher fields and valleys
iam beautiful pears plucked from the crown of ishtar by the daugter of down to embellish the garden
when icry the hills laugh when i humble my self the flower rejoice when i bow all the things are elated — Kahlil Gibran

The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature ... the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God. — H.L. Mencken

First of all, I would shoot myself if I ever had to play straight-forward characters that really don't have much of a past. Maybe it's just that I'm not a good enough actor to have to embellish, but I like having these really, really rich roles to play. — Drea De Matteo

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up. — Donna Tartt

Each of the Arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a Muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them. — Eliza Farnham

The truth is impossible to comprehend even when one is willing to tell it. For the truth resides in memory and memory is clouded with repression and a desire to embellish. The recollections of any individual are conditioned by the general truths to which he or she has tried to live. To recall an event is to interpret it, so the truth is altered by the very act of remembering. Therefore the truth, like God, does not exist - only the search for it. — Frank Hardy

We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We're willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea. — Pema Chodron

I always say show me a storyteller who doesn't embellish, and I'll show you a bad one. — Rabih Alameddine

Good manners are cost effective. They not only increase the quality of life in the workplace, they contribute to employee morale, embellish the company image, and play a major role in generating profit. — Letitia Baldrige

Like Thomas Hardy with his Casterbridge, my own fictional Pennington is based on a well-known English county town, which I embellish with buildings, parks, and houses from my imagination. — Catherine George

love can
embellish its beginning
sing its blossoming
and engrave its eternities

but can never
explain its loss. — Sanober Khan

I'VE SAVED THE BEST FOR LAST: There is ONE technique that can work to both find the risk, and close the deal. BUT it's a delicate one that requires mastery through preparation and practice. The strategy is called: What's the risk? What's the reward? When a prospect hesitates, you simply ask him or her to list the risks of purchase. Actually write them down. Prompt others. If the prospect says "I'm not sure," you ask, "Could it be ..." After you feel the list is complete, ask the prospect to list the rewards. Write them down, and embellish as much as possible without puking on the prospect. Then eliminate the risks one by one with lead in phrases like: Suppose we could ... did you know that ... I think we can ... Then you simply ask, "can you see any other reasons not to proceed?" One at a time, brick by brick, remove the risks that the buyer perceives as fatal mistakes in his decision-making process. Then drive home the rewards, both emotionally and logically. — Jeffrey Gitomer

The image a society evolves of the relationship between the living and the dead is, in the final analysis, an attempt, on the level of religious thought, to conceal, embellish or justify the actual relationships which prevail among the living. — Claude Levi-Strauss

The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage others, and some themselves; the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations. — Samuel Johnson

Nature has embellish'd rare as May
Its dew-gemm'd primroses glitter'd up,
To show pride from each budding weed,
Since from skies naught a ray dismay. — Nithin Purple

Embellish your flaws. They will turn into your assets. — Marie Lu

I shall always respect the composer. If I embellish, it is his idea I am embellishing. — Kate Smith

But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. — Gustave Flaubert

When you're writing a script you have the option to embellish on life or switch the order of events or make it generally more cinematic. I would stick too closely to my own experience and not necessarily think about the fact that it needs to have an event happen. Realising that I could channel my own experience into a story that was slightly more cinematic was a very important moment for me - allowing myself to accept that the kind of screenwriting I'm doing is a work of fiction. — Lena Dunham

We await their creative interpretations of works by others and we love how they freely adapt and alter the music we like and enjoy. The wonderful magical alchemy they co-create is enough to spur the imagination of the audience. There is no need for other instruments or vocals. The music alone suffices. Listening to them, we can close our eyes and be taken away to a faraway place, we can envision a story or embellish a memory. We can connect to spirit and source and what we connect to in our deepest being is akin to religious experience. They dedicate themselves to each performance fearlessly, courageously, passionately, and generously. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

I just find things that work and embellish them. — Lindsey Buckingham

I'm aware that couples tend to embellish 'how we met' folklore with all kinds of detail and significance. We shape and sentimentalise these first encounters into creation myths to reassure ourselves and our offspring that it was somehow 'meant to be'. — David Nicholls

I do write a lot from personal experience, but I also embellish a bit. — Miranda Lambert

I'm a songwriter, and I understand artistic licence. We can embellish, go on little journeys and explore our inner selves. It can be quite self-indulgent. — Laura Marling

You know, the immortality of the soul, free will and all that
it's all very amusing to talk about up to the age of twenty-two, but not after that. Then one ought to be giving one's mind to having fun without catching the pox, arranging one's life as comfortably as possible, having a few decent drawings on the wall, and above all writing well. That's the important thing: well-made sentences ... and then a few metaphors. Yes, a few metaphors. They embellish a man's existence. — Theophile Gautier

I embellish the truth of their lives with the lies of my imagination. — Charlie Lovett

I am often accused of being childish. I prefer to interpret that as child-like. I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things. I tend to exaggerate and fantasize and embellish. I still listen to instinctual urges. I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind. I never water my garden without soaking myself. It has been after such times of joy that I have achieved my greatest creativity and produced my best work. — Leo Buscaglia

The main information passed along to contactees is simply that the human body provides a host for a fragment of this undefinable soul energy. The major religions have been telling us this for thousands of years, pointing out that the human race supplies the shells for souls. Man's ego has demanded that he embellish this truth by adding the belief that his pitiful personality is worthy of preservation and that his memories and personality go along with the soul. — John A. Keel

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance. — Denise Levertov

There are tools that help sharpen freestyle skills like having a diverse vernacular, some sense of music theory, being outspoken, phrasing, spacing, cross word puzzles, thesauruses, the ability to expand on an issue and embellish that with more descriptive terminology. — Myka 9

Any story worth telling has been embellished a little bit, Skyco, but the best stories are born from an honest seed that simply grows a little in the retelling of it. — Jennifer Frick-Ruppert

IRVING: Flowery prose. Verbosity. Some folks think they're Neil Gaiman, and have ambitions of their scripts being reprinted for their adoring fans to pore over, when in reality, scripts are working documents designed to provide the narrative framework for their collaborators to decorate and embellish with imagery. — Brian Michael Bendis

I figured I'd embellish the truth a little, since the police might not be up on the finer points of bounty hunterism and might not understand about commandeering. — Janet Evanovich

Embellish the soul with simplicity, with prudence, and everything which is neither virtuous nor vicious. Love all men. Walk according to God; for, as a poet hath said, his laws govern all. — Marcus Aurelius

The tradition of portrait painting, to embellish or idealize the subject, remains the aim of everyday and of commercial photography, but it has had a much more limited career in photography considered as art. Generally speaking, the honors have gone to the Cordelias. — Susan Sontag

The successful memoirist [blogger] respects facts, uses them accurately, rigorously represses the human impulse to lie or embellish, but knows that truth is both different from facts and greater than facts, and not always their sum. — Bill Roorbach

Life has a vendetta against writers. It does everything in it's power to get in the way of our craft. Maybe it thinks we embellish too much? — Hannah Harding

Life is hard enough, you don't have to embellish the drama! — Marianne Williamson

Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one. — Amy Hempel

How comes it that you curse, Frere Jean? It's only, said the monk, in order to embellish my language. They are the colors of Ciceronian rhetoric. — Francois Rabelais

If you have a piece by Bach, he often develops the piece to such a high level that you can hardly do much more to it. But Saint-Luc wrote very simple baroque music, and so if you do not embellish it, it just falls apart. It's way too simple. — David Russell

Some are born to invent, others to embellish; but the gilder attracts more attention than the architect. — Luc De Clapiers

There's a tendency for designers to embellish the size of their business. I never lie. — Carolina Herrera

In this time of national crises ... per haps we would do well to spend a few minutes in considering projects which grace and embellish the earth, instead of shaking it. — Hubert H. Humphrey

Embellishing a story for whatever reason proves you're a liar. Doing it in front of someone who knows the truth proves your stupidity. — D.S. Mixell

But even after the first week, when Hart got out of the presidential race because of the Washington Post's threat to reveal a long-term relationship Hart had apparently been having with a prominent Washington woman, the media continued to embellish my past. — Donna Rice

Magic, she was discovering, was like poetry. Once you understood the logic, the meter, the rhyme behind it, you could embellish upon it and make it your own. On — Elise Kova

There are people who take rumors and embellish them in a way that can be devastating. And this pollution has to be eradicated by people in our business as best we can. — Bob Woodward

Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life. — Alfred North Whitehead

Once a lie is told, you have to keep on telling it. You not only have to repeat it time and time again, you have to embellish it, layer upon layer until you don't even remember the truth. — Cassie Dandridge Selleck

I answer that I try to write true stories but that at a given point the story becomes unbearable because of it's very truth, and then I have to change it. I tell her that I try to tell my story but all of a sudden I can't-I don't have the courage, it hurts too much. And so I embellish everything and describe things not as they happened but the way I wished they happened.
She says, "Yes, there are lives sadder than the saddest of books." I say, "Yes. No book, no matter how sad, can be as sad as a life. — Agota Kristof

I am only a mouthpiece through which to tell the story of lynching and I have told it so often that I know it by heart. I do not have to embellish; it makes its own way. — Ida B. Wells

I like the thought that what we are to do on this earth is embellish it for its greater beauty, so that oncoming generations can look back to the shapes we leave here and get the same thrill that I get in looking back at theirs - at the Parthenon, at Chartres Cathedral. — Philip Johnson

For now, his talk may be exciting, but it will pale with time. He will repeat himself and embellish on his lies, and doubts will grow. When we reach the temple and they see no reward for their wrong-placed faith, yes, it will be difficult, but they will come away stronger, for even the unkindest truth strengthens a man more than the prettiest lie. — R. Lee Smith

Though Christianity's early history was troubled, fortune eventually favored the new religion when, in the fourth century AD, the Emperor Constantine himself converted to it, banned the persecution of Christians and returned confiscated Church properties. Gradually, the remains of the Popes and important martyrs were removed from catacombs and buried in consecrated ground within the grounds of churches. The sack of Rome by the Goths in AD 410 put an end to the use of the catacombs for fresh burials, though for centuries pilgrims continued to visit them and Popes did their best to preserve and even embellish the important vaults. — Glenn Cooper

I supposed that when anyone accustomed to working with the mind is faced with a straightforward action, there's a tendency to embellish, to make it overly clever. On paper there's a certain symmetry. Now that I'm faced with the prospect of executing it I realize how hideously complicated it is. — Donna Tartt