Adjectives Quotes - Page 6

• 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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• What we really have to do is stop the adjective before the job title — whether it's 'black actor,' a 'gay actor' or 'anything actor,' Everybody thinks that equality comes from identifying people, and that's not where equality comes from. Equality comes from treating everybody the same regardless of who they are. I hope the media and the press catches on to that because it's time to move out of 1992.

  Matt Bomer

  Jobs, Moving, Gay

  "Magic Mike's Matt Bomer Talks About Being Out as Gay: What Brought Him to Tears?" by Mark Malkin, www.eonline.com. June 25, 2012.

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• To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.

  Gore Vidal

  Novelists, Nouns, Today

  Gore Vidal (2007). “Point to Point Navigation”, p.2, Vintage

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• Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective

  Rob Bell

  Christian, Nouns, Poor

  Rob Bell (2006). “Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith”, p.84, Harper Collins

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• People have only two or three adjectives to describe people in the public eye. And that's okay. As long as those adjectives aren't train wreck, mess, terrible.

  Taylor Swift

  Eye, Train Wrecks, Two

  "Why Taylor Swift Welcomed You to New York". Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. October 20, 2014.

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• Ardent, intelligent, sweet, sensitive, cultivated, erudite. These are the adjectives of praise in an androgynous world. Those who consider them epithets of shame or folly ought not to be trusted with leadership, for they will be men hot for power and revenge, certain of right and wrong.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Leadership, Sweet, Revenge

  Carolyn G. Heilbrun (1974). “Toward a recognition of androgyny”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• I heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

  Mark Twain

  Music, Two, Students

  Mark Twain (2015). “A Tramp Abroad: Mark Twain's Collections”, p.237, 谷月社

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• ... nothing seems completely to differentiate the poor but poverty. We find no adjectives to fit them, as a whole, only those of which Want is the mother. "Miserable" covers many; "shabby" most, and I am sadly aware that, in a large majority of minds, "disagreeable" includes them all.

  Albion Fellows Bacon

  Mother, Mind, Majority

  Albion Fellows Bacon (1914). “Beauty for Ashes, by Albion Fellows Bacon; with Numerous Illustrations”

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• The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding.

  Benjamin Lee Whorf

  Passive Voice, Nouns, Verbs

  Benjamin Lee Whorf, John B. Carroll, Stephen C. Levinson, Penny Lee (2012). “Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf”, p.113, MIT Press

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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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• I'm self-centered, inconsiderate, and what was the third adjective? Oh, yes, and I have this infantile fantasy that one day I'll amount to something as an actress.

  Jay Presson Allen

  Self, One Day, Actresses

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• The beginning of sense, not to say wisdom, is to realize that 'doing an action,' as used in philosophy, is a highly abstract expression--it is a stand-in used in the place of any (or almost any?) verb with a personal subject, in the same sort of way that 'thing' is a stand-in for anynoun substantive, and 'quality' a stand-in for the adjective.

  J. L. Austin

  Philosophy, Expression, Quality

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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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• But why wasn't I born, alas, in an age of Adjectives; why can one no longer write of silver-shedding Tears and moon-tailed Peacocks, of eloquent Death, of the Negro and star-enameled Night?

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Death, Stars, Writing

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• When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word, we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don’t quite fit our preferences and presuppositions. In an attempt to simplify, we force the Bible’s cacophony of voices into a single tone and turn a complicated, beautiful, and diverse holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says.

  Rachel Held Evans

  Beautiful, Voice, Cacophony

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• I go through the text making sure I haven't used any big words. If I find any fancy adjectives have crept in, I replace them with small words like 'nice' and 'big'. I've liked these words ever since I was told not to use them in English class at school. After that, I check that the sentences are short so as people won't get confused and I shorten all the chapters so they won't get bored. I can't read anything complicated these days, my attention span is too short. Everyone else probably feels the same.

  Martin Millar

  Confused, Nice, School

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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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• 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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• 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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