Adjectives Quotes

“In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, "Please will you do my job for me."

[Letter to Joan Lancaster, 26 June 1956]”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Children

“A world without adjectives would still have the sun rising and setting, the flowers blooming, the trees bearing fruits, the birds singing, and the bees stinging.”
― AA Patawaran, Write Here Write Now: Standing at Attention Before My Imaginary Style Dictator

“Moods are adjectives of the grammar of life.”
― Raheel Farooq

“...his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons. This is adjective-by-habit - a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.”
― William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

“So long as our untried senses and our naïve heart recognize themselves and delight in the universe of qualifications, they flourish with the aid and at the risk of the adjective, which, once dissected, proves inadequate, deficient. We say of space, of time, and of suffering that they are infinite; but infinite has no more bearing than beautiful, sublime, harmonious, ugly.... Suppose we force ourselves to see to the bottom of words? We see nothing—each of them, detached from the expansive and fertile soul, being null and void. The power of the intelligence functions by projecting a certain luster upon them, by polishing them and making them glitter; this power, erected into a system, is called culture—pryrotechnics against a night sky of nothingness.”
― Emil Cioran, A Short History of Decay

“It wasn't that I didn't feel like sharing. Mostly I just figured they couldn't do anything about it, so there was no point in worrying them. I said, 'A wee little bit,' instead, in honor of being in Ireland, where one adjective was never enough if three would do.”
― C.E. Murphy, Raven Calls

“The pale sword came shivering through the air”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons. This is adjective-by-habit - a habit you should get rid of. Not every oak has to be gnarled. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and a burden for the reader.”
― William Zinsser, On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

“Shane met him owing to the storybooks she studied to discover what attributes made one princessly—this wasn't technically a word, but she felt there should be equity in adjectives if not in life.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, We Shadows

“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, Compass Rose

“Kylpaitryc's eyes streamed tears as he coughed explosively on harsh, sinus-raping smoke.”
― David Weber, At the Sign of Triumph

“Define bravery if you will. It is not standing for rogue causes that are varnished thick with misused adjectives such as ‘progressive’ or ‘cutting edge’ or ‘woke.’ Bravery is not greed off-the-leash as some sort of pristine form of long-overdue liberation. It is not to rise in raucous defense of some supposedly cherished social movement from the safety of the rear echelon because we’ve embraced a movement that really hasn’t moved us to the front of anything. Bravery is not an act of abjectly denying fact and defying reality because our selfishness has become sufficiently audacious to render both as stifling and the stuff of visionless souls. None of these are bravery. Rather, bravery is marked by the stalwart and resolute determination to acknowledge the cowardice that drives illusions such as these so that we will forever be driven from them.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Have I told you that you're beautiful?'

'What?' The shift in conversation threw me.

'I might have, but I couldn't remember if I did,' he went on, tugging gently on the strap. 'Then I thought that it wasn't something you could say too often. You're beautiful, Poppy.'

My stupid, stupid heart skipped. 'Is that why you decided to wake me up in the middle of the night?'

'You're beautiful.' HIs head tilted, and I gasped at the feel of his lips on the longer scar on my cheek. He kissed that one and then the shorter one, above my eye. 'Both halves, and you should never question why anyone would find you utterly, irrevocably, and distractingly beautiful.'

The skipping was back, but I ignored it. 'That is a lot of adjectives.'

'I can come up with more.'

'That won't be necessary,' I advised. 'So, now that you've told me this, you can get off me.'

He smiled against my cheek. 'But you're comfortable, Princess.”
― Jennifer L. Armentrout, A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire