What are phrases?

Famous quotes containing the word phrases:

    And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather are metaphors.
    Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)

    She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?
    —E.M. (Edward Morgan)

    The Americans ... have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.
    W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)