Dictionary Quotes - Page 15

• And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up in a dictionary. You are meaning.

  Alan Watts

  People, World, Want

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• Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.

  William James

  Truth, Mean, Reality

  William James (2016). “William James: Essays and Lectures”, p.99, Routledge

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• The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.

  Socrates

  Success, Ignorance, Evil

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• Fail, it's not in my dictionary. I've got a good dictionary up there and the words 'fail' and 'failure' have been ruled out for years. I don't know what people are talking about who use that word. All I do know is temporary non-success, even if I've got to wait another 20 years for what I'm after, and I try to put that into people, no matter what their object in life.

  Percy Cerutty

  Talking, Years, People

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• And that brings us to tonight's word: Truthiness. Now I'm sure some of the word-police, the 'wordanistas' over at Websters, are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word!' Well, anybody who knows me knows that I am no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They're elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn't true, what did or didn't happen.

  Stephen Colbert

  Book, Police, Fans

  "Ice cream? Immigration? 12 ways Colbert kept truthiness alive" by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, www.today.com. April 10, 2014.

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• I can hardly believe that I even know this, but I am aware that Noah Webster's original dictionary, apart from being the first truly American lexicography, was a kind of line in the sand. It claimed a very discrete, American form of the English language, explicitly to compare it to the English of our erstwhile colonial masters who had been operating under Dr. Johnson's dictionary rules for well over a century.

  Bob Garfield

  Believe, Language, Kind

  Source: www.slate.com

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• I always go with the dictionary definition of feminism, which is just social, political and economic equality for women. And that's kind of a strategic thing on my part, because I think that it's the hardest definition to argue with. You know, who doesn't want that? Everyone wants equality for women.

  Jessica Valenti

  Thinking, Political, Feminism

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I am the dictionary definition of feminist in that I believe women are equal to men. People sometimes use the word for different meanings and it is important to understand that feminism at its core is really is just believing that everyone is equal and should have the same rights. We are all beautiful women, we are still in the fight for equal pay, and we don't need to fight each other.

  Kelly Osbourne

  Beautiful, Believe, Fighting

  Source: www.sheknows.com

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• The language in New Mexico is very different. At first when you hear the speech here, you don't really know what to do with it, but then I just went with it, because as a writer as well as a translator I do believe that translated words are not different names for the same thing. They're different names for different things. I tried to stay as true as I could, so I used Ruben Cobos' dictionary of Southwestern Spanish, and when I went into Spanish I never assumed the word I would use would be the word a nuevomexicano would use.

  Ana Castillo

  Believe, Different, Language

  Source: www.english.illinois.edu

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• If I am hated at Barcelona, it is their problem but not mine. Fear is not a word in my football dictionary.

  Jose Mourinho

  Football, Barcelona, Problem

  "Mourinho unveiled as Real Madrid coach" by Cindy Garcia-Bennett, www.independent.co.uk. May 31, 2010.

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• A dictionary is merely the universe arranged in alphabetical order.

  Anatole France

  Order, Alphabetical Order, Universe

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• The first definition of gross negligence that comes up when you take out the legal dictionary is being extremely careless. The minute you say someone is extremely careless you are saying they're grossly negligent.

  Rudy Giuliani

  Gross, Negligence

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• With "marriage," the word gets applied to same-sex marriages by proponents and opponents alike. That means the word itself is changing, and we reflect this change. But because of the idea that the dictionary is the objective voice of authority over culture and knowledge, it reads like approval. It's not a helpful way of looking at lexicography.

  Kory Stamper

  Mean, Culture, Helpful

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Love? he asked himself, giving no sense of recognition for that word in the dictionary of his mind. It was the only battle he had lost in life, the only thing that had been snatched away from him, before he could even claim it.

  Faraaz Kazi

  Love, Giving, Mind

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• The word hammockable (describing two trees that are the perfect distance apart between which a hammock can be hung) is not in the dictionary, but it should be. [Of lying in hammocks]

  Dan Kieran

  Distance, Lying, Two

  Dan Kieran, Tom Hodgkinson (2012). “The Book of Idle Pleasures”, p.194, Random House

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• Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Vocabulary, Light, Perfect

  Igor Stravinsky (1970). “Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons”, p.34, Harvard University Press

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• The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Language, Made

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• Finding the meaning of life is easy. Simply get a dictionary, go to the 'L' section, and find the word 'life.'

  Oscar Wilde

  Meaning Of Life, Life Is, Easy

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• Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground

  Noah Webster

  Ties, Long, Joy

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• I'm basically a poetry scholar, and I'm happier here in my studio with my row of Chinese dictionaries than I am, frankly, at Lincoln Center.

  Sam Hamill

  Lincoln Center, Chinese, Scholar

  Interview with Anne-Marie Cusac, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. March 31, 2003.

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• Cats connote sexuality in standard dream dictionaries.

  Wendy C. Ortiz

  Dream, Cat, Sexuality

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The Constitution has to be interpreted loosely, otherwise it becomes a straitjacket. You can't interpret it literally. You can pretend to, and go digging around in 18th Century dictionaries to figure out what 'cruel and unusual punishment' meant or what the 'right to bear arms' meant, but that is all fake really. The Constitution has to be interpreted in light of modern needs, and that's what they (the strict interpreters) end up doing in spite of all their investigations.

  Richard Posner

  Light, Punishment, Fake

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• I have my faithful rhyming dictionary that sits up there on my desk, but I have to tell you, there are very few new rhymes that I didn't think of. I often just go right through the alphabet in my head when I'm looking for a rhyme.

  Mary Ann Hoberman

  Thinking, Faithful, Rhyming

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• You can't win every battle! You must have the word Defeat in your dictionary; if not, defeat will triumph even more strongly!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Winning, Battle, Triumph

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• I have the liberal dictionary right here...let's see how they define water-boarding: 'Something done by the evil troops, who we don't support, to innocent terrorists violating their rights to bomb our cities and make us get gay marriage.'

  Jon Stewart

  Gay, Rights, Cities

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