Nouns Quotes - Page 5

• We declared war on terror-it's not even a noun, so, good luck.

  Jon Stewart

  Funny, War, Good Luck

  Commencement Address at The College of William & Mary, delivered 21 May 2004

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• People think of security as a noun, something you go buy. In reality, it's an abstract concept like happiness. Openness is unbelievably helpful to security.

  James Gosling

  Reality, Thinking, People

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• As real as,' said Eddie. 'As real as what?' said Jack. 'Wish I knew,' said Eddie. 'But I can't do corroborative nouns. None of us are perfect, are we? I can get started. As big as, as obscene as, as foul as. But I can't get any further. But that's life for you again. As unfair as...

  Robert Rankin

  Real, Perfect, Wish

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• The soul is a verb." He impales a lit candle on a spike. "Not a noun.

  David Mitchell

  Soul, Verbs, Lit

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• Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession. It is an on-again-off-again rather than once-and-for-all. Faith is not being sure where you're going but going anyway. A journey without maps. Tillich says that doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

  Frederick Buechner

  Faith, Journey, Opposites

  Frederick Buechner (2009). “Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC's of Faith”, p.109, Zondervan

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• Any noun can be verbed.

  Alan Perlis

  Learning, Programming, English Language

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• Relationship means something complete, finished, closed. Love is never a relationship; love is relating. It is always a river, flowing, unending. Love knows no full stop; the honeymoon begins but never ends. It is not like a novel that starts at a certain point and ends at a certain point. It is an ongoing phenomenon. Lovers end, love continues. It is a continuum. It is a verb, not a noun.

  Rajneesh

  Relationship, Mean, Love Is

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• I spent months searching for some secret code before I realized that common sense has nothing to do with it. Hysteria, psychosis, torture, depression: I was told that if something is unpleasant it's probably feminine. This encouraged me, but the theory was blown by such masculine nouns as murder, toothache, and rollerblade. I have no problem learning the words themselves, it's the sexes that trip me up and refuse to stick.

  David Sedaris

  Sex, Psychosis, Hysteria

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• Virtually every beginning poet hurts himself by an addiction to adjectives. Verbs are by far the most important things for poems-especially wonderful tough monosyllables like "gasp" and "cry." Nouns are the next most important. Adjectives tend to be useless.

  Donald Hall

  Hurt, Addiction, Important

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• All people in the world - who are not hermits or mutes - speak words. They speak different languages, but they speak words. They say, "How are you" or "I'm not feeling well" all over the world. These common words - these common elements that we have between us - the writer has to take some verbs and nouns and pronouns and adjectives and adverbs and arrange them in a way that sound fresh.

  Maya Angelou

  People, Feelings, Sound

  Source: www.washingtoncitypaper.com

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• The concept of why is already in the vernacular. It is now a noun. "That company doesn't know their why." "They need to learn their why." "That politician needs to understand his why." We talk about it as a noun. That never existed prior to 2009. That never existed prior to 2006 when I first started articulating it. This is the most amazing thing to me. It has now become a concept. It's part of the way we think about businesses and transactions and decisions.

  Simon Sinek

  Thinking, Decision, Needs

  Source: advisor.tv

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• I think the best way to put it is that newspictures are the noun and the verb; our kind of photography is the adjective and adverb. The newspicture is a single frame; ours, a subject viewed in series. The newspicture is dramatic, all subject and action. Ours shows what's back of the action.

  Roy Stryker

  Photography, Thinking, Adjectives And Adverbs

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• When one crosses over from an activity, or the verb, of writing or doing, and becomes a noun, like "a writer" I think that is an act of supreme self-consciousness that I've never, in effect, made. I write, but I don't like to think of myself as a writer. I think it's somewhat self-aggrandizing and pretentious. Now, I am a teacher.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Teacher, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.achievement.org

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• "What is truth?" said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Pilate was in advance of his time. For "truth" itself is an abstract noun, a camel, that is, of a logical construction, which cannot get past the eye even of a grammarian. We approach it cap and categories in hand: we ask ourselves whether Truth is a substance (the Truth, the Body of Knowledge), or a quality (something like the colour red, inhering in truths), or a relation ("correspondence"). But philosophers should take something more nearly their own size to strain at. What needs discussing rather is the use, or certain uses, of the word "true." In vino, possibly, "veritas," but in a sober symposium "verum."

  J. L. Austin

  Truth, Eye, Past

  "Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society". "Truth" by J. L. Austin, "Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society", 1950.

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• The word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet al the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb.

  Bell Hooks

  Love Is, Verbs, Als

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• I thought that Christian was a noun, a person looking for authenticity. I never understood that idea that a band could be Christian or something could be Christian. But it just can be and is.

  Rob Bell

  Christian, Ideas, Band

  Source: www.inlander.com

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• It's weird the way "finger puppet" sounds okay as a noun... ladies.

  Demetri Martin

  Funny, Humor, Sound

  "Demetri Martin. Person". Documentary, Comedy, Music, www.imdb.com. 2007.

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• Here is God's purpose - For God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper; is the articulation not the art, objective or subjective; is loving, not the abstraction "love" commanded or entreated; is knowledge dynamic, not legislative code, not proclamation law, not academic dogma, not ecclesiastic canon. Yes, God is a verb, the most active, connoting the vast harmonic reordering of the universe from unleashed chaos of energy.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Art, Law, Energy

  R. Buckminster Fuller (1967). “No More Secondhand God”, p.28, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

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• Ludicrous concepts…like the whole idea of a 'war on terrorism'. You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?

  Terry Jones

  Country, War, Oxford

  "Powell speaks with forked tongue" by Terry Jones, www.theguardian.com. February 23, 2003.

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• The adjective is the enemy of the noun. Variant: The adjective is the enemy of the substantive.

  Voltaire

  Writing, Enemy, Adjectives

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• Fascist is not just an epithet. Fascist is a proper noun that means a specific thing. It`s a real thing. It`s not always referring to ancient history.

  Rachel Maddow

  Real, Mean, Ancient

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• What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender.

  Terry Jones

  War, Circles, Political

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• Saw you walking barefoot taking a long look at the new moon's eyelid later spread sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair asleep but not oblivious of the unslept unsleeping elsewhere Tonight I think no poetry will serve Syntax of rendition: verb pilots the plane adverb modifies action verb force-feeds noun submerges the subject noun is choking verb disgraced goes on doing now diagram the sentence

  Adrienne Rich

  Sleep, Dark, Thinking

  Adrienne Rich (2011). “Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010: Poems 2007–2010”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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• We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

  Stephen Fry

  Writing, Thinking, Doe

  "Stephen Fry reveals new BBC TV series" by Tim Lusher, www.theguardian.com. July 20, 2010.

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• By now you know: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, "Take me to your leaders." Even I--unused to your ways though I am--would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them. Instead I will say, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths." These are worth it. These are what I have come for.

  Margaret Atwood

  Dream, Mistake, Sunset

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