Past Participle Quotes & Sayings

Always deliver more than expected. — Larry Page

I can manifest my neurotical emotions, emancipate an epicureal instinct, and elaborate on my heterosexual tendencies. — Joyce Carol Oates

I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page. — Colum McCann

It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular; it is why he does it. The motive is everything. Let a man sanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no common act. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For such a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world a sanctuary. His entire life will be a priestly ministration. As he performs his never-so-simple task, he will hear the voice of the seraphim saying, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of the hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. — A.W. Tozer

If you can remember all the accessories that go with your best outfit, the contents of your purse, the starting lineup of the New York Yankees or the Houston Oilers, or what label "Hang On Sloopy" by The McCoys was on, you are capable of remembering the differences between a gerund (verb form used as a noun) and a participle (verb form used as an adjective). — Stephen King

Suddenly, one day, there was this thing called parenting. Parenting was serious. Parenting was fierce. Parenting was solemn. Parenting was a participle, like going and doing and crusading and worrying. — Nora Ephron

Learn with Alex and Anna are charming every-day life stories for children. — Peter Hayward

Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows Where noun, and verb, and participle grows. — John Dryden

I'm checking my pockets for spare words and sentences but I'm finding none, not an adverb, not a preposition or even a dangling participle because there doesn't exist a single response to such an outlandish request. — Tahereh Mafi

Look at him, he's slain another dangling participle. — Skip Coryell

Perhaps we should rejoice that people's emotions aren't designed for the good of the group. Often the best way to benefit one's group is to displace, subjugate, or annihilate the group next door. Ants in a colony are closely related, and each is a paragon of unselfishness. That's why ants are one of the few kinds of animal that wage war and take slaves. When human leaders have manipulated or coerced people into submerging their interests into the group's, the outcomes are some of the history's worst atrocities. — Steven Pinker

Etymology: from Latin ad-, "to" + visum, past participle of videre, "to see". Advice is what you get from your parents when you are growing up, and from your children when you are growing old. — Evan Esar

People of very different opinions
friends who can discuss politics, religion, and sex with perfect civility
are often reduced to red-faced rage when the topic of conversation is the serial comma or an expression like more unique. People who merely roll their eyes at hate crimes feel compelled to write jeremiads on declining standards when a newspaper uses the wrong form of its. Challenge my most cherished beliefs about the place of humankind in God's creation, and while I may not agree with you, I'll fight to the death for your right to say it. But dangle a participle in my presence, and I'll consider you a subliterate cretin no longer worth listening to, a menace to decent society who should be removed from the gene pool before you do any more damage. — Jack Lynch

I feel like it's better to see a sermon lived than it is to hear one preached. — Niecy Nash

It wasn't fair that men got the verbs and she ended up with adjectives. Jack plotted and squeezed and bulldozed. She was caught snooping - pathetic participle, half verb, half adjective. — John Casey

One bad habit Teall wishes to cure us of right away is mistreating the hyphen by putting it between an adverb ending in ly and a participle. His example is a headline: "Use of 'Methodist' Is Newly-Defined." Lavishing sympathy on the hyphen, he laments, "Did you ever see a hyphen more completely wasted? A hyphen more unnecessarily and fruitlessly employed?" Even — Mary Norris

The present participle is the Devil himself, she thought, now that we are in the place for believing in Devils. — Virginia Woolf

AGHAST (AGHA'ST) adj.[either the participle of agaze,(see AGAZE) and then to be written agazed, or agast,or from a and gast, a ghost, which the present orthography favours; perhaps they were originally different words.]Struck with horrour, as — Samuel Johnson

A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea ... [T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center. — Catherynne M Valente