Dictionary Quotes - Page 13

• Many journalists become very defensive when you suggest to them that they are anything but impartial and objective. The problem with those words "impartiality" and "objectivity" is that they have lost their dictionary meaning. They've been taken over. "Impartiality" and "objectivity" now mean the establishment point of view.

  John Pilger

  Taken, Mean, Views

  Source: progressive.org

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• Now what is a wedding? Well, Webster's dictionary describes a wedding as the process of removing weeds from one's garden.

  Homer

  Weed, Garden, Process

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• The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help.

  Carl Sandburg

  Helping, Poet, Scholar

  Carl Sandburg, Margaret Sandburg, George Hendrick (1999). “Ever the Winds of Chance”, p.21, University of Illinois Press

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• When you look up 'hilarious' in the dictionary, there's a picture of you.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Looks, Look Up

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.5, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I've always been fascinated with prostitution. I looked it up in the dictionary as a child, and I remember hearing that Jesus would hang out with prostitutes. I would always focus on the prostitutes.

  Craig Seymour

  Jesus, Children, Focus

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It becomes 'one's own' only when the speaker populates it with his own intentions, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people's mouths, in other people's contexts, serving other people's intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one's own

  Mikhail Bakhtin

  People, Doe, Mouths

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• The high-minded definition of politics is: 'the art or science of government; the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy.' It is only when you keep reading in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary that you get closer to the truth: 'political activities characterized by artful and often dishonest practices'.

  Cal Thomas

  Art, Reading, Government

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• When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.

  William James

  Bipolar, Genius, Kind

  William James (1987). “Writings, 1902-1910”, p.29, Library of America

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• Let us designate anarchism1 anarchism as you define it. Let us desiginate anarchism2 anarchism as I and the American Heritage College Dictionary define it.

  Bryan Caplan

  College, Heritage, Anarchy

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• I looked up 'standard' in the dictionary. There are eleven different definitions.

  Dave Winer

  Different, Definitions, Eleven

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• The dictionary also invites a playful reading. It challenges anyone to sit down with it in an idle moment. There are worse ways to kill time.

  Mortimer Adler

  Reading, Challenges, Way

  Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren (2014). “How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading”, p.175, Simon and Schuster

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• I don't change the language for children books. I don't make the language simpler. I use words that they might have to look up in the dictionary. The books are shorter, but there's just not that much difference other than that to be honest. And the funny thing is, I have adult writer friends [to whom I would say], "Would you think of writing a children's book?" and they go, "No, God, I wouldn't know how." They're quite intimidated by the concept of it. And when I say to children's books writers, would they write an adult book, they say no because they think they're too good for it.

  John Boyne

  Children, Book, Writing

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• I didn't even know what the word lesbian meant until I was called one... and then I had to look it up in the dictionary.

  Kathleen Hanna

  Looks, Knows

  Interview with Nina Corcoran, allstonpudding.com.

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• No disability or dictionary out there, is capable of clearly defining who we are as a person.

  Robert M. Hensel

  Who We Are, Defining, Disability

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• "Then idiots talk," said Eugene, leaning back, folding his arms, smoking with his eyes shut, and speaking slightly through his nose, "of Energy. If there is a word in the dictionary under any letter from A to Z that I abominate, it is energy."

  Charles Dickens

  Character, Eye, Interesting

  Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank (1868). “The Works of Charles Dickens: Our mutual friend”, p.17

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• If you would look up bad labor relations in the dictionary, you would have an American Airlines logo beside it.

  Elton Joe Kendall

  Looks, Logos, Aviation

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• I don't think that ambition should not be in the dictionary of entrepreneurs. But our ambition should be realistic. You have to realise that you can't do everything.

  Mukesh Ambani

  Ambition, Thinking, Entrepreneur

  "I think we changed the whole business ethos in India: Mukesh Ambani". Interview with Sudeep Chakravarti and Daksesh Parikh, indiatoday.intoday.in. June 30, 1993.

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• The verb 'to darn' is explained in my pocket dictionary as follows: 'To mend by imitating the texture of the stuff, with thread and needle.' But this definition does not correspond to the work accomplished by good Chinese housewives. When they mend a sock, they do not try 'to imitate the texture of the stuff'. Their art makes no attempt at concealment: it even takes a certain pride in revealing itself.

  Daniele Vare

  Art, Pride, Chinese

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• H. L Mencken's Dictionary of the American Language supplies a long list of slang terms for being drunk, but the Irish are no slouches, either. They're spannered, rat-arsed, cabbaged, and hammered; ruined, legless, scorched, and blottoed; or simply trolleyed or sloshed. In Kerry, you're said to be flamin'; in Waterford, you're in the horrors; and in Cavan, you've gone baloobas, a tough one to wrap your tongue around if you ARE baloobas. In Donegal, you're steamin', while the afflicted in Limerick are out of their tree.

  Bill Barich

  Long, Drunk, Tree

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• There's no such thing as an unabridged dictionary.

  Jack Lynch

  Jack Lynch (2009). “The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English, from Shakespeare to South Park”, p.96, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• As an artist you're looking for universal triggers. You want it both ways. You want it to have an immediate impact, and you want it to have deep meanings as well. I'm striving for both. But I hate it when people write things that sound like they've swallowed a f... dictionary.

  Damien Hirst

  Hate, Writing, Artist

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• If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know? If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words? Why is 'phonics' not spelled the way it sounds? How come abbreviated is such a long word?

  George Carlin

  Long, Way, Firsts

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• Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. to his daughter Martha

  Thomas Jefferson

  Daughter, Writing, Caring

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.45, Cambridge University Press

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• The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that 'it isn't in the dictionary' - although down to the time of the first lexicographer no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Innovation, Lexicographer, Use

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.149, University of Georgia Press

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• Economists use the word consume to mean "utilize economic goods," but the Shorter Oxford Dictionary's definition is more appropriate to ecologists: "To make away with or destroy; to waste or to squander; to use up." The economies that cater to the global consumer society are responsible for the lion's share of the damage that humans have inflicted on common global resources.

  Alan Thein Durning

  Mean, Oxford, Use

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