Adjectives Quotes - Page 4

• There's a misconception that survival of the fittest means survival of the most aggressive. The adjective 'Darwinian' used to refer to ruthless competition; you used to read that in business journals. But that's not what Darwinian means to a biologist; it's whatever leads to reproductive success.

  Steven Pinker

  Mean, Competition, Survival

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• If you can remember all the accessories that go with your best outfit, the contents of your purse, the starting lineup of the New York Yankees or the Houston Oilers, or what label "Hang On Sloopy" by The McCoys was on, you are capable of remembering the differences between a gerund (verb form used as a noun) and a participle (verb form used as an adjective).

  Stephen King

  New York, Writing, Yankees

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.112, Simon and Schuster

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• Goresthorpe Grange is a feudal mansion - or so it was termed in the advertisement which originally brought it under my notice. Its right to this adjective had a most remarkable effect upon its price, and the advantages gained may possibly be more sentimental than real. Still, it is soothing to me to know that I have slits in my staircase through which I can discharge arrows; and there is a sense of power in the fact of possessing a complicated apparatus by means of which I am enabled to pour molten lead upon the head of the casual visitor.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Real, Humorous, Mean

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2017). “The Complete Works of Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated): Complete Sherlock Holmes Books, The Professor Challenger Series, The Brigadier Gerard Stories… (Including Poetry, Plays, Historical Works, Spiritualist Writings & Personal Memoirs)”, p.6172, e-artnow

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• I like that 'Mad Men' is now an adjective I use to describe clothing when I'm shopping: 'I like this top. It's very 'Mad Men.''

  Alison Brie

  Men, Shopping, Mad

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• We had got as far as this, when who should walk in but the gentleman himself, who had been drinking his beer in the taproom and had heard the whole conversation. Who was I? What did I want? What did I mean by asking questions? He had a fine flow of language, and his adjectives were very vigorous.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Humorous, Drinking, Mean

  Arthur Conan Doyle, General Press (2016). “The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 56 Stories & 4 Novels”, p.425, GENERAL PRESS

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• I'm a film director. Gay is an adjective that I certainly am, but I don't know that it's my first one. I think if you're just a gay filmmaker, you get pigeonholed just like if you say I'm a black filmmaker, I'm a Spanish filmmaker, I'm a whatever.

  John Waters

  Gay, Thinking, Black

  "INTERVIEW : He Really Can't Help Himself : Shockingly eccentric writer-director John Waters offers yet another look at the gruesome with his new film, 'Serial Mom.' It stacks up nicely against his cult faves 'Pink Flamingos' and 'Mondo Trasho'". Interview with James Grant, articles.latimes.com. April 10, 1994.

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• The adjective "political" in "political philosophy" designates not so much the subject matter as a manner of treatment; from this point of view, I say, "political philosophy" means primarily not the philosophic study of politics, but the political, or popular, treatment of philosophy, or the political introduction to philosophy the attempt to lead qualified citizens, or rather their qualified sons, from the political life to the philosophic life.

  Leo Strauss

  Philosophy, Mean, Son

  "What is Political Philosophy?". Book by Leo Strauss, 1959.

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• Look for verbs of muscle, adjectives of exactitude.

  Mary Oliver

  Poetry, Verbs, Looks

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• Adjectives are the curse of America.

  Rita Mae Brown

  America, Curse

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• As a former English professor, I can assure you that grammar is the qualitative interpolation of language. Adjectives, pronouns, predicates, past pluperfect indicative - ridiculous. It has qualities, shadings, differentiations, rhythmic structures of symbolic meaning.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Science, Past

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• A musician's attempt to summarize his or her work leads to all this prescriptive chatter, or what I call the Modifier's Madness. A lot of adjectives working overtime.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Musician, Madness, Chatter

  "Q&A With Sufjan Stevens". Interview with Melanie Seibert, relevantmagazine.com. April 22, 2004.

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• In the history of the concept of number has been adjective (three cows, three monads) and noun (three, pure and simple), and now ... number seems to be more like a verb (to triple).

  Barry Mazur

  Simple, Numbers, Three

  Barry Mazur (2004). “Imagining Numbers: (particularly the square root of minus fifteen)”, p.138, Macmillan

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• I'm proud of the two adjectives, superficial and frivolous.

  Jeanloup Sieff

  Two, Proud, Superficial

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• Purity of action guided Janis's behavior. If she was going to be good, she was very, very good. If she was going to be bad, she let all the stops out. Anything less than full commitment to an idea of activity was 'hypocritical', the worst adjective anyone could hurl at another.

  Laura Joplin

  Commitment, Ideas, Action

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• It is amusing to detect character in the vocabulary of each person. The adjectives habitually used, like the inscriptions on a thermometer, indicate the temperament.

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman

  Character, Vocabulary, Amusing

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1850). “The optimist”, p.79

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• In the course of time I have learned to tramp about coral reefs, twenty to thirty feet under water, so unconcernedly that I can pay attention to particular definite things. But after all my silly fears have been allayed, even now, with eyes overflowing with surfeit of color, I am still almost inarticulate. We need a whole new vocabulary, new adjectives, adequately to describe the designs and colors of under sea.

  William Beebe

  Ocean, Silly, Eye

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• A being who can create a race of men devoid of real freedom and inevitably foredoomed to be sinners, and then punish them for being what he has made them, may be omnipotent and various other things, but he is not what the English language has always intended by the adjective holy.

  John Stuart Mill

  God, Religious, Real

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• Invisible, repetitive, exhausting, unproductive, uncreative - these are the adjectives which most perfectly capture the nature of housework.

  Angela Davis

  Invisible, Capture, Repetitive

  Angela Y. Davis (2011). “Women, Race, & Class”, p.222, Vintage

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• The breakdown of our language, evident in the misuse, i.e., the misunderstanding of nouns and adjectives, is most grave, though perhaps not so conspicuous, in the handling of prepositions, those modest little connectives that hold the parts of a phrase or a sentence together. They are the joints of any language, what make it, literally, articulate.

  Mary McCarthy

  Together, Phrases, Nouns

  Mary McCarthy (1985). “Occasional prose”, Harcourt

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• diseases, as all experience shows, are adjectives, not noun substantives.

  Florence Nightingale

  Nouns, Disease, Illness

  Florence Nightingale (1860). “Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and what it is Not”, p.47

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• That's the great thing about being in the third grade. If you've got one polysyllabic adjective, everyone thinks you're a genius.

  John Green

  Children, Thinking, Genius

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• Anti-Zionists, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It was Thomas Hobbes who, anticipating semantics, pointed out that words are counters, not coins; that the wise man looks through them to reality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism and commonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting.

  Milton Steinberg

  Wise, Men, Reality

  "The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland—Then, Now, Tomorrow". Book by Gil Troy, 2018.

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• With a few exceptions, Fellini's films have failure and despair running through them: Life continues, but I can't imagine 'Felliniesque' as an exclusively uplifting adjective. Fellini's best films are the ones that distill this essence -- the paradoxical quality of melancholic ecstasy, a surreal, bittersweet vitality -- to perfection.

  Damian Pettigrew

  Uplifting, Running, Essence

  The Los Angeles Times, April 2003.

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• She was a natural blonde, with delicate hands and feet, and in her youthful photographs one saw a girl with mocking eyes and a tragic smile, the course of whose life would conspire in time to transpose that pair of adjectives.

  Michael Chabon

  Girl, Eye, Delicate Life

  Michael Chabon (2011). “Wonder Boys”, p.192, Open Road Media

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• One dictionary that I consulted remarks that "natural history" now commonly means the study of animals and plants "in a popular and superficial way," meaning popular and superficial to be equally damning adjectives. This is related to the current tendency in the biological sciences to label every subdivision of science with a name derived from the Greek. "Ecology" is erudite and profound; while "natural history" is popular and superficial. Though, as far as I can see, both labels apply to just about the same package of goods.

  Marston Bates

  Mean, Science, Animal

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