Dictionary Quotes - Page 3

• Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).

  Ernest Hemingway

  Time, Writing, Thinking

  Ernest Hemingway (1981). “Selected Letters, 1917-1961”

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• Any grand new dictionary ought itself to be a democratic product, a book that demonstrated the primacy of individual freedoms, of the notion that one could use words freely, as one liked, without hard and fast rules of lexical conduct.

  Simon Winchester

  Book, Use, Individual

  Simon Winchester (1998). “The surgeon of Crowthorne: a tale of murder, madness and the love of words”

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• You do not find knowledge in a dictionary, only information.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Information, Management

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• The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic, living institutions transplanted from English soil. Their significance is vital, not formal; it is to be gathered not simply by taking the words and a dictionary, but by considering their origin and the line of their growth.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Government, Essence, Growth

  "Gompers v. United States, 233 U.S. 604, 610". Judicial opinion, 1914.

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• Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lexicographer, Literature, Tracing

  Samuel Johnson, John Walker (1835). “Johnson's English Dictionary”, p.559

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• Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no can't in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestion, the raw material of possible poems and histories.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Suggestions

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• But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself,into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously.

  Julio Cortazar

  Memories, Teaching, Smell

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.143, Everyman's Library

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• If one were loyal to one's nation only because it was good and true ... one would not be loyal to any nation but to truth and goodness. The idea of patriotism would have no place either in our dictionaries or our lives.

  Max Eastman

  Ideas, Loyal, Goodness

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• We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.

  Mervyn Peake

  Printed Word, Black, Sound

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.230, The Overlook Press

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• To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.

  Mark Strand

  Mark Strand (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.397, Knopf

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• To make dictionaries is dull work.

  Samuel Johnson

  Dull

  A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

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• I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.

  William Stafford

  Development, Definitions, Language

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• I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violent, and I am not violent.)

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Style, Technique

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Jul 04, 2014

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• Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices.

  David Crystal

  People, Choices, Made

  "David Crystal: the story of English spelling" by David Crystal, www.theguardian.com. August 23, 2012.

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• The dictionary is a closed system in which someone interested in the meaning of a word can go around and around and end up exactly where he started, simply because words are defined in terms of other words, and these, in turn, are defined in terms of still other words.

  Peter Farb

  Ends, Term, Turns

  Peter Farb (2015). “Word Play: What Happens When People Talk”, p.227, Vintage

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• It's in the dictionary. And when I find what it is, I'll write it down in case it comes up again, I'll be certain to avoid it.

  Aimee Mann

  Writing, Come Up, Cases

  Song: I Know There's a Word, Album: Whatever, 1993

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• If you look up feminist in the dictionary, it just means someone who believes men and women have equal rights.

  Aziz Ansari

  Believe, Mean, Men

  "Aziz Ansari Explains Why We Should All Be Feminists" by Emily Zemler, www.elle.com. October 8, 2014.

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• One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Science, Defining, Term

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• The only place where compensation comes before service is in the dictionary or anywhere the government meddles.

  Orrin Woodward

  Government, Compensation

  Twitter post from Dec 29, 2015

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• My pictures are complex and so am I. When I am almost symbolistic in writing, there is a more limiting difference’s of accepting, while I can be even more complex in the photographs and people can usually accept them within the framework of their own limitations or lack of limitations – there is no dictionary meaning… they can look up for the photographic image and allow it to confuse them.

  W. Eugene Smith

  Writing, Differences, People

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• Trickle-down theories do not address the legitimate aspirations of the poor. We must lift those at the bottom so that poverty is erased from the dictionary of modern India.

  Pranab Mukherjee

  Modern India, Addresses, Poverty

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• What I liked about Greece was [...] the impressive force of the language itself, unconfined by dictionaries, spoken in the streets, in cafés and in the country.

  Peter Levi

  Country, Language, Force

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• If you discover a word in my book that you don't understand, ask your parents so they can look it up in the dictionary for you.

  Gloria Estefan

  Book, Reading, Parent

  Comment to audience at book signing at Macy's in New York City, November 21, 2006.

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• In the speech sound wave, one word runs into the next seamlessly; there are no little silences between spoken words the way there are white spaces between written words. We simply hallucinate word boundaries when we reach the end of a stretch of sound that matches some entry in our mental dictionary.

  Steven Pinker

  Running, White, Space

  Steven Pinker (2003). “The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language”, p.171, Penguin UK

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• Do you know what ‘Sputnik’ means in Russian? ‘Travelling companion’. I looked it up in a dictionary not long ago. Kind of a strange coincidence if you think about it. I wonder why the Russians gave their satellite that strange name. It’s just a poor little lump of metal, spinning around the Earth.

  Haruki Murakami

  Mean, Thinking, Spinning Around

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “Sputnik Sweetheart”, p.108, Random House

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