“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things
Source: The God of Small Things
My Day (1935–1962)
Context: Little by little it dawned upon me that this law was not making people drink any less, but it was making hypocrites and law breakers of a great number of people. It seemed to me best to go back to the old situation in which, if a man or woman drank to excess, they were injuring themselves and their immediate family and friends and the act was a violation against their own sense of morality and no violation against the law of the land. (14 July 1939)
“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things
Source: The God of Small Things
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist
Pt. I, sec. 1, "The Principle of Economy"
The Philosophy of Style (1852)
Context: There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.
William Powell (author) book The Anarchist Cookbook
"Postscript", p. 153.
The Anarchist Cookbook (1971)
“I make it easier for people to leave by making them hate me a little.”
Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist
Source: The Book of Tomorrow
Alexander Alekhine (1892–1946) Russian / French chess player, chess writer, and chess theoretician
On the Zeitnot problem.
Source: Chess Life, Vol. 16-18, 1961. p. 113.
W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk
Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. IX: Of the Sons of Master and Man
Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher
Of Man's Progress in Virtue
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)