Dictionary Quotes - Page 8

• I can't describe the feeling when I go down - it's down down down and there's never going to be an up again. And whatever was good isn't good any more; white becomes grey, music becomes dictionaries, honey becomes beer and the sky a curdled lemon. There's no caramel anymore.

  John Marsden

  Beer, White, Sky

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• Please be SILENT and LISTEN. I am the SCHOOLMASTER and you are in the CLASSROOM. Just like ELEVEN PLUS TWO equals TWELVE PLUS ONE, And even a FUNERAL can be REAL FUN, You will find my DICTIONARY is quite INDICATORY. If you want to read my story, just look... THEN UNREAD.

  Pseudonymous Bosch

  Fun, Real, Two

  Pseudonymous Bosch (2011). “The Name of this Book is Secret: The Secret Series”, p.54, Usborne Publishing Ltd

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• I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Desire, Want

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales”, p.369

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• [God is] all that is. Everything. Everything. Breath, life. Just get Webster's Dictionary and throw it on the floor. It's everything... God is everything.

  Iyanla Vanzant

  Breaths

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• If we don't understand how metaphor works we will misunderstand most of what we read in the Bible. No matter how carefully we parse our Hebrew and Greek sentences, no matter how precisely we use our dictionaries and trace our etymologies, no matter how exactly we define the words on the page, if we do not appreciate the way a metaphor works we will never comprehend the meaning of the text.

  Eugene H. Peterson

  Appreciate, Greek, Use

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• My erotic poetry is not poetry that uses vernacular words. It is a very erotic poetry, but I never use anything, for example, that is not in the dictionary. I don't like to be ugly, I seek out what is beautiful, and if my great search is for freedom and beauty, I can't be vulgar, ordinary.

  Maria Teresa Horta

  Beautiful, Ugly, Vulgar

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• First book was handwritten, then the printing press, now we've got our Kindles. To be able to push a button and a dictionary comes up. And then, at my age, that I can make the letters any size I want, and that I can carry all of William Shakespeare, all of Gogol, all of Franz Kafka in my handbag? You've got to love it.

  Lore Segal

  Book, Age, Printing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Dream dictionaries are so disappointing. They're so limited, and I think they're just total bullshit. I really do. I don't know much about the Freudian theory of dreams; it's probably more interesting than your average hippie dream dictionary, but it's got to be a lot deeper than that. It can't all be about sex all the time, so I don't know if Freud is right either.

  Neko Case

  Dream, Hippie, Thinking

  Source: music.avclub.com

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• Every one of the geezers who continues to play a leadership role has one quality of overriding importance: neotony. The dictionary definition is that neotony, a zoological term, involves "the retention of youthful qualities throughout old age." It is more than merely retaining a youthful appearance, although that is often part of it. Neotony is the retention of all those wonderful qualities that we associate with youth: curiosity, playfulness, eagerness, fearlessness, warmth, energy.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Play, Curiosity, Age

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• The American Heritage Dictionary defines crucible as "a place, time, or situation characterized by the confluence of powerful intellectual, social, economic, or political forces; a severe test of patience or belief; a vessel for melting material at high temperatures." A crucible was the vessel in which medieval alchemists attempted to turn base metals into gold. That the alchemists inevitably failed in their audacious attempts doesn't denigrate the power of the crucible as a metaphor for the circumstances that cause an individual to be utterly transformed.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Powerful, Political, Crucible

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• "True science has no belief," says Dr. Fenwick, in Bulwer-Lytton's 'Strange Story;' "true science knows but three states of mind: denial, conviction, and the vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but the suspension of judgment." Such, perhaps, was true science in Dr. Fenwick's days. But the true science of our modern times proceeds otherwise; it either denies point-blank, without any preliminary investigation, or sits in the interim, between denial and conviction, and, dictionary in hand, invents new Graeco-Latin appellations for non-existing kinds of hysteria!

  H. P. Blavatsky

  Latin, Hands, Two

  "Isis Unveiled". Book by Helena Blavatsky. Volume I, Chapter VII, 1877.

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• I go to a hotel and try to get there by 5:30 in the morning. I keep a dictionary, a thesaurus, a bible, a deck of playing cards, a bottle of sherry, and stacks of yellow sticky pads. I shut myself in for six, seven hours. I have an arrangement with the hotel that no one may go in my room. After three or four months, they might slip notes under my door like, "Dear Ms. Angelou, please let us change the linens. We think they might be molding." It's probably true. I let them in if they promise not to touch anything other then the bed.

  Maya Angelou

  Morning, Thinking, Yellow

  Source: www.washingtoncitypaper.com

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• If you just open your dictionary, "morality" is the sense that separates good from evil. And if you really want to see what evil is, it just says that "evil is the opposite of good." And if you ask "Then what is good?" it says that it's the opposite of evil.

  Gaspar Noe

  Opposites, Evil, Want

  Source: www.freepatentsonline.com

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• A man armed with a rhyming dictionary is a dangerous man.

  Bruce Springsteen

  Men, Dangerous Man, Rhyming

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The word 'Sudra' which means 'Son of prostitute' should not find a place even in the history hereafter. We will not allow it to find a place in the dictionary or encycl

  Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

  Mean, Son, Should

  Collected works of Periyar E.V.R., p. 490, 2005.

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• David Foster Wallace was a brilliant experimentalist who I deeply admire. His ability to do formalism helped me understand how to tackle stories like "Dictionary" and "Failed Revolution." "Dictionary," in particular, functions against narrative in many ways - each of the definitions are their own mini-story or prose poem, and the collection of them adds up to create a different effect than the traditional Freytagian Pyramid story.

  Alexander Weinstein

  Pyramids, Definitions, Narrative

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• The traditional dictionary definition of the difference is that an alcoholic will steal your wallet in a blackout, come to, and apologize for it. A junkie will steal your wallet and then help you look for it. But ultimately I think all addictions boil down to just not being able to be with yourself for any long degree of time.

  Jerry Stahl

  Thinking, Differences, Addiction

  "Jerry Stahl Talks Smack". Interview with Royal Young, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 25, 2013.

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• The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the world over.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Men, Needs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.410

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• As sheer casual reading matter, I still find the English dictionary the most interesting book in our language.

  Albert J. Nock

  Book, Reading, Interesting

  Memoirs of a Superfluous Man ch. 1 (1943)

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• In the dictionary, beautiful, love, amazing, and sweet all have the same definition: the definition is you.

  Kevin Huizenga

  Beautiful, Sweet, Girlfriend

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• A very simple and useful device is to have a memorandum-book, so small that it can be easily carried in the pocket, to be used instead of your mind to keep note of any errand or any appointment that you may have. The Standard Diary, less than four inches long and less than two and a half inches wide, is one of the best for this purpose. ...In fact, such diaries as these, in their wide range of information, would seem to be all that one needs in practical life, the only other book that at all approaches them in this respect being unquestionably Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.

  Anna Brackett

  Book, Simple, Two

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• My life is absolutely meaningless. When I consider the different periods into which it falls, it seems like the word Schnur in the dictionary, which means in the first place a string, in the second, a daughter-in-law. The only thing lacking is that the word Schnur should mean in the third place a camel, in the fourth, a dust-brush.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Daughter, Fall, Mean

  Soren Kierkegaard (1959). “Either/ Or”

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• In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, "memoirs to serve for a history," which is but materials to serve for a mythology.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Hands, History, Greek

  Henry David Thoreau (1975). “Early Essays and Miscellanies”, p.60, Princeton University Press

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• I looked up the word POLITICS in the dictionary, and it's actually a combination of two words: poli, which means 'many,' and tics, which means 'bloodsuckers.'

  Jay Leno

  Mean, Two, Tics

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• It is intolerance to speak of toleration. Away with the word from the dictionary!

  Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau

  Speak, Intolerance, Toleration

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