Literary notes about Minute (AI summary)
In literature, the word minute is deployed both to articulate the brevity of time and to suggest an exactness in detail. It often marks those fleeting, decisive moments—a minute here can signify an urgent pause before action, as seen when a character requires immediate attention [1] or counts every minute in a prolonged feeling of remorse [2]. Conversely, it underscores meticulous description, with authors detailing events with minute precision [3], or employing the word in analytical contexts that emphasize small, nuanced differences [4, 5]. In each usage, whether highlighting the rapid passage of time or the scrupulous clarity of observation, minute enriches narratives by evoking a sense of both transient immediacy and critical exactitude.
- “Wait one minute, Praskovya Ivanovna, I beg you.”
— from The possessed : by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - How I should grudge and count up every minute of it, so as to waste not a single instant!’
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - That day I commenced the journal of these adventures which has enabled me to relate them with more scrupulous exactitude and minute detail.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne - My second reflection is founded on those large probabilities, which the mind can judge of, and the minute differences it can observe betwixt them.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - Mr. Poe has two of the prime qualities of genius, a faculty of vigorous yet minute analysis, and a wonderful fecundity of imagination.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 by Edgar Allan Poe
