Adjectives Quotes - Page 5

• First, cut out all the wisdom, then cut out all the adjectives.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Cutting, Firsts

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• As a former English professor, I can assure you that grammar is the qualitative interpolation of language. Adjectives, pronouns, predicates, past pluperfect indicative - ridiculous. It has qualities, shadings, differentiations, rhythmic structures of symbolic meaning.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Science, Past

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• A musician's attempt to summarize his or her work leads to all this prescriptive chatter, or what I call the Modifier's Madness. A lot of adjectives working overtime.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Musician, Madness, Chatter

  "Q&A With Sufjan Stevens". Interview with Melanie Seibert, relevantmagazine.com. April 22, 2004.

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• Adjectives are the curse of America.

  Rita Mae Brown

  America, Curse

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• Anti-Zionists, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It was Thomas Hobbes who, anticipating semantics, pointed out that words are counters, not coins; that the wise man looks through them to reality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism and commonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting.

  Milton Steinberg

  Wise, Men, Reality

  "The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland—Then, Now, Tomorrow". Book by Gil Troy, 2018.

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• One dictionary that I consulted remarks that "natural history" now commonly means the study of animals and plants "in a popular and superficial way," meaning popular and superficial to be equally damning adjectives. This is related to the current tendency in the biological sciences to label every subdivision of science with a name derived from the Greek. "Ecology" is erudite and profound; while "natural history" is popular and superficial. Though, as far as I can see, both labels apply to just about the same package of goods.

  Marston Bates

  Mean, Science, Animal

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• A being who can create a race of men devoid of real freedom and inevitably foredoomed to be sinners, and then punish them for being what he has made them, may be omnipotent and various other things, but he is not what the English language has always intended by the adjective holy.

  John Stuart Mill

  God, Religious, Real

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• In the course of time I have learned to tramp about coral reefs, twenty to thirty feet under water, so unconcernedly that I can pay attention to particular definite things. But after all my silly fears have been allayed, even now, with eyes overflowing with surfeit of color, I am still almost inarticulate. We need a whole new vocabulary, new adjectives, adequately to describe the designs and colors of under sea.

  William Beebe

  Ocean, Silly, Eye

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• She was a natural blonde, with delicate hands and feet, and in her youthful photographs one saw a girl with mocking eyes and a tragic smile, the course of whose life would conspire in time to transpose that pair of adjectives.

  Michael Chabon

  Girl, Eye, Delicate Life

  Michael Chabon (2011). “Wonder Boys”, p.192, Open Road Media

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• The supermoon is a 16-inch pizza compared with a 15-inch pizza. It's a slightly bigger moon; I ain't using the adjective 'supermoon.'

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Moon, Inches, Bigger

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• You make it a production. Slam doors. Knock things over. Scream. But I just leave. Even if I'm still standing there, I leave. I am refusing you. I am denying you. I am an adjective that is quickly turning into a noun.

  David Levithan

  Doors, Nouns, Scream

  David Levithan (2011). “The Lover's Dictionary: A Novel”, p.89, Macmillan

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• I can't tell you why I keep getting asked to play gay characters, but I never really considered 'gay' as an adjective, as a playable thing. Maybe it's an element of the character, but it just describes a preference.

  John Michael Higgins

  Character, Gay, Play

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• I think it's important for you to understand that homosexuality is not a noun that describes a condition. It's an adjective that describes feelings or behavior.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Thinking, Feelings, Important

  Source: www.mormonnewsroom.org

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• I learned to build bookshelves and brought books to my room, gathering them around me thickly. I read by day and into the night. I thought about perfectibility, and deism, and adjectives, and clouds, and the foxes, I locked my door, from the inside, and leaped from the roof and went to the woods, by day or darkness.

  Mary Oliver

  Book, Night, Doors

  Mary Oliver (2016). “Upstream: Selected Essays”, p.15, Penguin

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• Prudent readers will do well to hold Three Weeks at arm's length, unless they want to be cut by flying adjectives.

  Elinor Glyn

  Cutting, Flying, Want

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• Green is a process, not a status. We need to think of 'green' as a verb, not an adjective.

  Daniel Goleman

  Thinking, Needs, Verbs

  Daniel Goleman (2009). “Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything”, p.28, Crown Business

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• Good is a noun rather than an adjective.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Unity, Nouns

  Robert M. Pirsig (1991). “LILA An Inquriry into Morals”

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• Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something.

  Ezra Pound

  Doe, Use, Superfluous

  Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, Jonathan Stalling, Lucas Klein (2008). “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition”, p.9, Fordham Univ Press

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• I love that moment in writing when language falls short. There is something more there. A larger body. Even by the failure of words I begin to detect its dimensions. As I work the prose, shift the verbs, look for new adjectives, a different rhythm, syntax, something new begins to come to the surface.

  Susan Griffin

  Fall, Writing, Different

  Susan Griffin (1996). “The Eros of Everyday Life: Essays on Ecology, Gender and Society”, Anchor

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• Whoever has power takes over the noun - and the norm - while the less powerful get an adjective.

  Gloria Steinem

  Powerful, Nouns, Language

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• Thanks to the Polgars the adjective 'men's' before events and the 'affirmative action' women's titles such as Woman Grandmaster have become anachronisms.

  Garry Kasparov

  Women, Titles, Events

  Garry Kasparov (2010). “How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom”, p.77, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• Amazing, powerful, inspirational - those adjectives might make me sound like a fawning fan, but REWORK is that useful. Be prepared for a new feeling of clarity and motivation.

  Kathy Sierra

  Motivation, Powerful, Feelings

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• A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adective is often applied to those "liberals" who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the hightest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.

  Gore Vidal

  Self, Concern For Others, Greed

  "Screening History (Growing Up With Gore Vidal)". Book by Gore Vidal (p. 24), 1994.

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• Many ideas have been transformed by adding one crucial adjective-women's bank, women's music, women's studies, women's caucus. That adjective did more than change a phrase. It implied a lot of new content: child care, flexible work hours, new standards of creditworthiness, new symbolism, new lyrics.

  Gloria Steinem

  Children, Ideas, Symbolism

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• All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.

  Martin Amis

  Father, Style, Adults

  Martin Amis (2017). “The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump. Essays and Reportage, 1986-2016”, p.120, Random House

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