Say It Nicely Quotes & Sayings

If we take the beginning of John 1:1, the Word is already there. If we push it back further (if one can even do so!), say, a year, the Word is already there. A thousand years, the Word is there. A billion years, the Word is there.[3] What is John's point? The Word is eternal. The Word has always existed. The Word is not a creation. The New English Bible puts it quite nicely: "When all things began, the Word already was. — James R. White

It just seems like right now we're in a place where people are being witch-hunted for expressing an opinion. Even if it's a lousy opinion or a shitty opinion, and comics I don't think can ever fall into the trap of any groups that want to censor what a person says or thinks or punish a person for expressing what they think. Anything you say about a social issue is going to offend half the country. I don't care how nicely you say it, I don't care how well you construct the joke, simply by stating the opinion, you are for something and anti something else. — Jim Norton

The world is a mountain. Whatever you say, it will echo it back to you. Don't say, "I sang nicely and the mountain echoed an ugly voice!" That is not possible. The human intellect is a place where hesitation and uncertainty take root. There is no way to overcome this hesitation except by falling in love. — Rumi

Say what you will about it, Hell is story friendly. If you want a compelling story, put your protagonist among the damned. The mechanisms of hell are nicely attuned to the mechanisms of narrative. Not so the pleasures of Paradise. Paradise is not a story. It's about what happens when the stories are over. — Charles Baxter

Lowering his voice, he said, "In America we have a custom. When you're given presents for your birthday, you're supposed to open them and say thank you."
Tatiana nervously looked down at the present. "Thank you." Gifts were not something she was used to. Wrapped gifts? Unheard of, even when they came wrapped only in plain brown paper.
"No. Open first. Then say thank you."
She smiled. "What do I do? Do I take the paper off?"
"Yes. You tear it off."
"And then what?"
"And then you throw it away."
"The whole present or just the paper?"
Slowly he said, "Just the paper."
"But you wrapped it so nicely. Why would I throw it away?"
"It's just paper."
"If it's just paper, why did you wrap it?"
"Will you please just open my present?" said Alexander — Paullina Simons

I come from an environment where the men actually say, "Is it OK if I take off my jacket?" in a meeting. Everyone wears suits; it is a very dressed-up world. Even if I wear jeans, I still wear a blazer and jewelry. I think there is something nice about coming to work and dressing nicely. — Aerin Lauder

I would say - and paint doesn't peel unless it's acrylic paint, so maybe it is acrylic paint that they're using, not oil paint. So let me say yes, it would be acrylic house paint, which, when it dries, peels very nicely. So let's go with that. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

It's all chop-change chop-change with you. Either go out with me and treat me nicely, or leave me alone. As I say, I am not interested in fuckwittage. — Helen Fielding

The hotel which had had the bad luck to draw Aunt Agatha's custom was the Splendide, and by the time I got there there wasn't a member of the staff who didn't seem to be feeling it deeply. I sympathized with them. I've had experience of Aunt Agatha at hotels before. Of course, the real rough work was all over when I arrived, but I could tell by the way everyone grovelled before her that she had started by having her first room changed because it hadn't a southern exposure and her next because it had a creaking wardrobe and that she had said her say on the subject of the cooking, the waiting, the chambermaiding and everything else, with perfect freedom and candour. She had got the whole gang nicely under control by now. The manager, a whiskered cove who looked like a bandit, simply tied himself into knots whenever she looked at him. — P.G. Wodehouse

So you shoot people," she said quietly. "You're a killer."
"Me? How?"
"The papers and the police fixed it up nicely. But I don't believe everything I read."
"Oh, you think I accounted for Geiger - or Brody-or both of them."
She didn't say anything. "I didn't have to," I said. "I might have. I suppose, and got away with it. Neither of them would have hesitated to throw lead at."
"That makes you a killer at heart, like all cops."
"Oh, nuts. — Raymond Chandler

Everything about my heart is a crime scene.
I drink to forget things it takes me 2 beers to name.
I pour my breath into things only worth forgetting.
I have nothing left to say to the ghosts.
Their cold hands and bitter mouths keep kissing me awake
when I have asked them nicely and then not-so-nicely
to be left alone.
I have nothing left to say to the ghosts.
Two decades full of nothing but monsters and crime scenes
and sometimes I am the monster and sometimes
I am the crime scene. There is nothing I would undo
so much as things I wish would wake up forgotten. — Clementine Von Radics

That's sweet. Nice of you." Johnson put his hands in his pockets. Dove couldn't help but wonder if he was massaging a sore bag of testicles. Dove looked around, and Johnson shuffled his feet. It seemed neither knew what to say, but she hoped neither wanted to part ways either.
Johnson's default was always medical.
"How's your infection?"
Die. Die. Kill me.
"It's ... cleared up ... nicely." Dove twisted her hand into her hair. — Debra Anastasia

Do you prefer fermented or distilled?
This is a trick question. It doesn't matter how much you like wine, because wine is social and writing is anti-social. This is a writer's interview, writing is a lonely job, and spirits are the lubricant of the lonely. You might say all drinking is supposed to be social but there's a difference, at one in the morning while you're hunched over your computer, between opening up a bottle of Chardonnay and pouring two-fingers of bourbon into a tumbler. A gin martini, of course, splits the difference nicely, keeping you from feeling like a deadline reporter with a smoldering cigarette while still reminding you that your job is to be interesting for a living. Anyone who suggests you can make a martini with vodka, by the way, is probably in need of electroconvulsive therapy. — Stuart Connelly

I offer you a second way of approaching the moment where everything in your life just stops, this one from the actor Robert Duvall: "I exist very nicely between the words 'action' and 'cut.'"
And even a third way: "It doesn't present as pain," I once heard an oncological surgeon say of cancer. — Joan Didion

You want me to let you go?" I ask, leaning down, pausing just shy of her lips.
"Yes."
"Ask nicely," I tell her. "Say 'Lorenzo Gambini, I beg of you, please, let me go and I'll suck your dick.'"
She laughs again, harder. "You wish."
"I do," I say. "No doubt about it."
"Lorenzo Gambini," she whispers between kisses, "I beg of you, please... fuck me."
I kiss her once more before pulling back, shifting position, smirking. "Well, since you asked so nicely..."
I thrust hard, sliding right in first goddamn try.
BAM. — J.M. Darhower

The thing I like best about Max is that he is brave." "What did he do that was brave?" "It's not one thing," I say. "It's everything. Max is not like any other person in the whole world. Kids make fun of him because he is different. His mom tries to change him into a different boy and his dad tries to treat him like he is someone else. Even his teachers treat him differently, and not always nicely. Even Mrs. Gosk. She is perfect but she still treats Max differently. No one treats him like a regular boy, but everyone wants him to be regular instead of himself. With all that, Max still gets out of bed every morning and goes to school and the park and the bus stop and even the kitchen table. — Matthew Dicks

And then I got it. Dan didn't need me to bake cakes, or entertain his uncle, or dress up, or field his mother's expectations, or make his sisters feel important, or chit-chat nicely to his relations. He just needed me to be there. Because when I was with him, it made it easier for him to be with his family. To be able to point across a room and say, "She's with me," to his Uncle Patrick, his mother, his cousins, but most important, to himself. — Kate Kerrigan

I've had girl friends who've said they liked me, and it's like, 'Look, it's not gonna go anywhere,' but if you say that nicely, then you can still be friends. — Kellan Lutz

Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not. — Elizabeth Gilbert

This culture destroys landbases. That's what it does. When you think of Iraq, is the first thing that comes to mind cedar forests so thick that sunlight never touched the ground? One of the first written myths of this culture is about Gilgamesh deforesting the hills and valleys of Iraq to build a great city. The Arabian Peninsula used to be oak savannah. The Near East was heavily forested (we've all heard of the cedars of Lebanon). Greece was heavily forested. North Africa was heavily forested.
We'll say it again: this culture destroys landbases.
And it won't stop doing so because we ask nicely. — Derrick Jensen

The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun. — G.K. Chesterton

When we are stunned to the place beyond words, we're finally starting to get somewhere. It is so much more comfortable to think that we know what it all means, what to expect and how it all hangs together. When we are stunned to the place beyond words, when an aspect of life takes us away from being able to chip away at something until it's down to a manageable size and then to file it nicely away, when all we can say in response is "Wow," that's a prayer. — Anne Lamott

Don't say that I'm beautiful and exquisite and like no one you've ever met before and that you're very much afraid that you're going to fall in love with me. You'll say it eventually, but let's postpone it. Apart from that, I think we'll get along very nicely. — Ayn Rand

If [literature] should turn into pure propaganda or pure entertainment, society will slip back into the sty of the immediate
which is to say, the memoryless existence of hymenoptera and gastropods. None of this is so important, to be sure. The world can get by nicely without literature. But without human beings it can get by better yet. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I've been sexually assaulted, physically attacked, felt unsafe in my own house, and nearly killed myself because I'm transgender. Now I'm not saying that its the same struggle as racism. But what I will say is that if people are intentionally ignorant you can't fight them with words. Sometims you have to fight back. Or scream. And you know what. That's life. Despite the lies you may have been told no one won their rights by asking for them nicely. People fought for them. So ya I'm sorry if what I said may "offend" a few white people, but I'm going to fuking say it anyways. — Adam Snowflake

Nicely, thank you, Mr. Laurence. But I am not Miss March, I'm only Jo," returned the young lady.
"I'm not Mr. Laurence, I'm only Laurie."
"Laurie Laurence, what an odd name."
"My first name is Theodore, but I don't like it, for the fellows called me Dora, so I made them say Laurie instead."
"I hate my name, too, so sentimental! I wish every one would say Jo instead of Josephine. How did you make the boys stop calling you Dora?"
"I thrashed 'em."
"I can't thrash Aunt March, so I suppose I shall have to bear it." And Jo resigned herself with a sigh — Louisa May Alcott

You can say anything with a Post-It.
I'm not entirely sure why that is.
Maybe the friendliness of the squares makes it easier. A square is nicely compact and less intimidating than a full page.
And they come in cheerful colors. Non-white paper is kind of inherently festive.
Or maybe paper that sticks feels more important than paper that can blow away.
(Though you can move them, if you need to put them somewhere else.)
They might not be as lasting as words carved in stone, but Post-It thoughts will stay.
For awhile, at least. — Erin Morgenstern

The artist draws a picture of a rose very nicely with all attention and artistic sense, and yet it does not become as perfect as the real rose. If that is the real fact, how can we say that the real rose has taken its shape without Intelligence behind the beauty? — A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

Thought you were going to be in touch. Where were you?"
"Where? There aren't places anymore, duck," he responded. "No locations now, just individuals. You didn't hear? Everyone's their own nation, with their own blog. Because everybody has something important to say; everybody's putting out press releases on what they ate for breakfast. It's the era of self-importance. Everyone's their own world. Doesn't matter where people are. Or where I was."
"Nicely dodged. — Tom Rachman

I went to Jersey City State College to please a family member. I wasn't prepared for school. To say I failed out is putting it nicely. — Derek Luke