Mincing Quotes & Sayings

We are not in a mincing lady's boudoir; we are, as it were, two abstract beings in a balloon, who have met in order to speak out the truth. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She loved that man madly, but in a delirious way of some kind; there was never any mooching and mincing around, just talk and a very deep companionship that none of us would ever be able to fathom. — Jack Kerouac

I looked back to see Holmes mincing within my footsteps, his skirt drawn up to reveal the trousers below. Were it not for the threat hanging over us, I would have given out with a girlish giggle at the sight, but I refrained. I passed the gates with the revolver in my hand, but there was no human there, only a scurry in the dustbins. — Laurie R. King

There's always a little truth behind every 'just kidding'. A little knowledge behind every 'I don't know'. A little emotion behind every 'I don't care'. And a little pain behind every 'it's okay'. — Anonymous

Behind every footballing tough guy there lurks a mincing aesthete with a love of art for art's sake, football for football's sake. A win without art is somehow less than a victory; less, almost, than a beautiful defeat. In football, the romantic and the pragmatist are ever at war in the same breast. Beauty, it must be understood here, is not Barcelona's aim but their method. And last night they were ready to use this method at every opportunity - quick-fire passing of wit and purpose in the danger areas, seeking always to produce an unlooked-for player in a position of threat. — Simon Barnes

I get kind of sad when I look at all of my magazines and think about how at one time I was much more impressed with a certain fashion editorial, or how I feel like I can't really relate to being that excited about fashion anymore. Maybe it's being jaded, but I honestly like that now, when something's really good, I feel more affected by it. — Tavi Gevinson

I heard you've been having some problems with your girlfriend." Headmistress Northcutt says.
"No," I say. "Not at all." Audrey broke up with me after the winter holiday, exhausted by my moodiness. It's impossible to have problems with a girlfriend who's no longer mine. — Holly Black

someone else, bore its way in and feed off that mind too. Even the cute little student mincing along in her flowery dress, the shuffling old fella with his shuffling spaniel, they look Ebola-lethal. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me. Maybe I'm getting the flu. — Tana French

There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania ... — Agnes Repplier

When I first came out, I thought, I want to walk like a real woman, I don't want to do mincing steps. And there was some girl I saw walking up Holloway Road in Islington who had this long languid walk and I thought, that's what I like, so I incorporated her walk into mine. — Eddie Izzard

I had rather be a Kitten, and cry mew, Than one of these same Meeter Ballad-mongers: I had rather heare a Brazen Candlestick turn'd, Or a dry Wheele grate on the Axle-tree, And that would set my teeth nothing an edge, Nothing so much, as mincing Poetrie ... — William Shakespeare

When you first start working for me, directly for me, I micromanage until I trust you. — Mark Cuban

Grace comes into the soul, as the morning sun into the world; first a dawning, then a light; and at last the sun in his full and excellent brightness. — Thomas Adams

She walked in somber seclusion, unable to connect with women despite her heart's desire to do so while being shadowed by men who hungered for the indefinable; and while she yearned for friendship, they yearned for something more and what she had been in search of remained removed from her, and the more she erected barriers, the more they crossed them and each time they did, she turned from them and hid. — Donna Lynn Hope

It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible - in short, an absolute woman-hater - had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen - nay, let us be just - had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in - sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. — R.M. Ballantyne

I hate to go mincing through life, afraid to take a single long step for fear somebody is watching. I want to "wave my wild tail and walk by my wild lone." There wasn't a bit of real harm in my opening that window and talking to Perry. There wasn't even any harm in his trying to kiss me. He just did it to tease me. Oh, I hate conventions. As you say, hang consequences.'
'But we can't hang 'em, Pussy - that's just the trouble. They're more likely to hang us. — L.M. Montgomery

Robin: When you do marry, who will you marry?
Maria: I have not quite decided yet, but I think I shall marry a boy I knew in London.
Robin(yells): What? Marry some mincing nincompoop of a Londoner with silk stockings and a pomade in his hair and face like a Cheshire cheese? You dare do such a thing! You - Maria - if you marry a London man I'll wring his neck! ( ... ) I'll not only wring his neck, I'll wring everybody's necks, and I'll go right away out of the valley, over the hills to the town where my father came from, and I won't ever come back here again. So there!
( ... )
Maria: Why don't you want me to marry that London boy?
Robin(shouting): Because you are going to marry me. Do you hear, Maria? You are going to marry me. — Elizabeth Goudge

[H]is mouth pursed, but pursed in American, more generous than English pursing, ready for broader vowels and less mincing sounds. His body was long and lean and trim; he had American hips, ready for a neat belt and the faraway ghost of a gunbelt. — A.S. Byatt

I will not mince words. There's been enough mincing for one day. Therefore, I shall ask my question bluntly: How does a man know that his body has been turned inside out? ... His eyes can see the back of his skull with an alarming clarity. I am told it hurts like hell. Especially when he refuses to explain why he has been investigating the hangman's replacement — Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

Neither my husband nor I am interested in mincing words. If I break something, for example, I have to announce it. I'm a compulsive confessor. — Jennifer Connelly

And that's the last oath I shall ever be able to swear," she thought; "once I set foot on English soil. And I shall never be able to crack a man over the head, or tell him he lies in his teeth, or draw my sword and run him through the body, or sit among my peers, or wear a coronet, or walk in procession, or sentence a man to death, or lead an army, or prance down Whitehall on a charger, or wear seventy-two different medals on my breast. All I can do, once I set foot on English soil, is to pour out tea and ask my lords how they like it. D'you take sugar? D'you take cream?" And mincing out the words, she was horrified to perceive how low an opinion she was forming of the other sex, the manly, to which it had once been her pride to belong. — Virginia Woolf

Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth. — Chuck Norris

When I went to school, my intention was to be a lawyer. When I attended university that was still the clear intention; I was going to be a lawyer. Why? Because it was as far as I could get from my father's antics and world. I thought that the world of the arts probably led people into the kind of behavior I had seen with him and that had resulted in a lot of hard times for my mother and me. — James Lipton

You was talkin' out of yer head last night, too," chortles Davy. "No one's gonna fancy me. I'm gonna be ugly and no on'es gonna fancyme!" he mimics, mincing about the hammock. "You are such a rum cove, Jacky, for thinkin' such things when yer just about beat t' death! Fancy me? Fancy me? Jacky, no one's gonna fancy us, we're all gonna end up lookin' like Snag!"
"Which is how a salty dog sailor's supposed to look," says Willy with a firm nod.
"And you're halfway there, Jack-o!" crows Tink.
Ah, the sweet comfort of friends. — L.A. Meyer

Unlike an envied and admirable few, I separate my friends and almost never dare mingle one group with another. When I do, it is usually a social disaster, like mixing drinks. I love good beer and I love good wine, but you cannot drink both on the same evening without suffering. I love the friends with whom I play or once daily played snooker and tooted quantities of high-grade pulverized Andean flake; I love the friends with whom I dine at preposterously expensive restaurants; I love the friends with whom I'm film-making or mincing on the stage. I love and value them all equally and don't think of them as stratified or in tiers, one group in some way higher or more important than the rest, but the thought of introducing them to each other makes me shiver and shudder with cringing embarrassment. — Stephen Fry

I got a very late start at fatherhood. I'm a late bloomer in general. It took me seven years to get through four years of college. I was five years away from 40 before I had a family, and I had never been around kids much at all. All of a sudden, I was around three boys all the time. — Rick Yancey

Loretta folded her arms. She felt like a heroine in a movie, confronted by a jealous husband in a kitchen while outside the camera is aching to draw back and show a wonderland of adventures waiting for her - long, frantic rides on trains, landscapes of wounded soldiers, a lovely white desert across which a camel caravan draped voluptuously in veils moves slowly with a kind of mincing melancholy, the steamy jungles of India opening before British officers in white, young officers, the mysteries of English drawing-rooms cracking before the quick, humorless smirk of a wise young woman from America ... — Joyce Carol Oates

I'm stuck somewhere a small island in the middle of the Atlantic where I'm alone. Because in France, they're like, 'No, you're not like us, you're not a French guy.' And in America, they're like, 'You're not like us.' I'm really alone in my little thing. — Louis Leterrier

I would sooner a writer were vulgar than mincing; for life is vulgar, and it is life he seeks. — W. Somerset Maugham

She was at the age when she looked as much like an overgrown boy as a girl. And on that subject why was it that the smartest people mostly missed that point? By nature all people are of both sexes. So that marriage and the bed is not all by any means. The proof? Real youth and old age. Because often old men's voices grow high and reedy and the take on a mincing walk. And old women sometimes grow fat and their voices get rough and deep and the grow dark little mustaches. — Carson McCullers

Peter smiled as Concheetah sashayed across the ballroom floor
Concheetah sashayed towards him, wriggling her hips, full lips in a pout, followed obediently by the tentative, Tapping Ted dressed in tight shorts and singlet. Tapping? Tapping because he always wore conspicuous, tap-dancing shoes in the club.
Was Ted going to rip up the stage as a mincing Irish dancer or maybe perform a Gene Kelly routine or the Swan Lake ballet in taps? It was terrible to imagine. Peter bit his lip at that thought, hoping he wouldn't burst into howls of laughter.
He had noted after coming to several shows, that Ted usually stood at the side of the stage ready with a drink of champagne and an encouraging word and a dry towel to mop Her Highness's face. And he always cried during the
show's finale, Abba's Dancing Queen. Poor Tapping Ted. — T.W. Lawless

The stones were sharp,
The wind came at my back;
Walking along the highway,
Mincing like a cat. — Theodore Roethke

Jeff watched her come, the whole time. He never noticed her mincing, hesitant steps on treacherous heels. He was simply swept up in the ancient ceremony. And discovering, as untold millions of young men had discovered before him, that there is nothing in the world as beautiful as his bride approaching. — Eric Flint

We have to state, without mincing words, that there is an inseparable bond between our faith and the poor. May we never abandon them. — Pope Francis

You know it's a perverted crowd when a guy is screaming at you to take your shirt off. — Jared Leto

Let there be no mincing of comparisons in this assertion. Not Turner, not Monet, painted so directly blinding shafts of sunlight as has this Spaniard. — James Huneker

It is with hearts full of sadness that we have decided to separate. — Gwyneth Paltrow

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone. — Oscar Wilde

A few people have tried to make me see that my writing isn't quite their thing by saying to me: 'What about realism?' To which my general response is, 'What about it?' However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of my favorite writers, Marilynne Robinson, was to say something similar if asked 'What about the fantastic?' — Helen Oyeyemi

Not exactly smashing stereotypes of liberals as mincing pantywaists, the left's entire contribution to the war effort thus far has been to whine. — Ann Coulter

It is curious and interesting to notice what an attraction a fussy, mincing, nickel-plated word has for you. — Mark Twain

A neighbour put his budgerigar in the mincing machine and invented shredded tweet. — Chic Murray

Very" is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of "I love you very much" or the heart-slamming intensity of "I love you"? — Florence King