Dulcie Sol

“Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain Beauty. When you speak, or read, or write, you can tell if you’ve said or read or written a fine sentence. You can recognize a well-turned phrase or an elegant style. But when you are applying the rules of grammar skillfully, you ascend to another level of the beauty of language. When you use grammar you peel back the layers, to see how it is all put together, see it quite naked, in a way. And that’s where it becomes wonderful, because you say to yourself, 'Look how well made this is, how well constructed it is!' 'How solid and ingenious, rich and subtle!' I get completely carried away just knowing there are words of all different natures, and that you have to know them in order to be able to infer their potential usage and compatibility. I find there is nothing more beautiful, for example, than the very basic components of language, nouns and verbs. When you've grasped this, you've grasped the core of any statement. It's magnificent, don't you think? Nouns, verbs...”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“Amelia Bedelia," said Mrs. Rogers,
"Christmas is just around the corner."
"It is?" said Amelia Bedelia. "Which corner?"
Mrs. Rogers lauhged and said,
"I mean tomorrow is Christmas Day."
"I know that," said Amelia Bedelia.”
― Peggy Parish, Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia

“Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“It was, she believed, a simple and unassailable fact of life that if a woman went to epic lengths to throw herself on the mercy of a man, the man would not, could not, refuse.”
― Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer