Adjectives Quotes - Page 8

• I've once gotten in trouble with certain gay activists because I'm not gay enough! I am a morose homosexual. I'm melancholy. Gay is the last adjective I would use to describe myself. The idea of being gay, like a little sparkler, never occurs to me. So if you ask me if I'm gay, I say no.

  Richard Rodriguez

  Gay, Ideas, Lasts

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• The word heterosexual is an adjective, the word homosexual is an adjective. They describe an activity. Of course there's a homosexual activity; of course there's a heterosexual activity. But there's no homosexual person. There's no heterosexual person. Everybody is everything.

  Gore Vidal

  Homosexual, Persons, Courses

  "Fresh Air Remembers Writer And Critic Gore Vidal". www.npr.org. August 2, 2012.

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• The adjectives that are in the book ["Win"] - passion, persuasion, persistence, perfection, prioritization, being people-centered - none of them are as important as principles. Without principles, the language will fail.

  Frank Luntz

  Book, Passion, Persistence

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• Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives

  Alfred de Musset

  Abuse, Romanticism

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• Use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something. Don't use such an expression as 'dim land of peace.' It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer's not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol. Go in fear of abstraction.

  Ezra Pound

  Writing, Expression, Land

  Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound (2009). “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition”, p.9, Fordham Univ Press

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• I had always thought that the 'good,' and the 'bad' and the 'violent' did not exist in any absolute, essential sense. It seemed to me interesting to demystify these adjectives in the setting of a Western. An assassin can display a sublime altruism while a good man can kill with total indifference.

  Sergio Leone

  Men, Interesting, Sublime

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• I am troubled by the devaluing of the word 'design’. I find myself now being somewhat embarrassed to be called a designer. In fact I prefer the German term, Gestalt-Ingenieur. Apple and Vitsoe are relatively lone voices treating the discipline of design seriously in all corners of their businesses. They understand that design is not simply an adjective to place in front of a product’s name to somehow artificially enhance its value. Ever fewer people appear to understand that design is a serious profession; and for our future welfare we need more companies to take that profession seriously.

  Dieter Rams

  Names, Voice, Apples

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• When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Perhaps the adjective 'elderly' requires definition. In physics, mathematics, and astronautics it means over thirty; in the other disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties. There are, of course, glorious exceptions; but as every researcher just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty are good for nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory!

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Mean, College, Elderly

  Profiles of the Future ch. 2 (1962).

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• My pet peeve and my goal in life is to somehow get an adjective for 'integrity' in the dictionary. 'Truthful' doesn't really cover it, or 'genuine.' It should be like 'integritus.'

  Rashida Jones

  Integrity, Goal, Pet

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• Lord Darlington (LD): I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules. Lady Windemere (LW): If we had 'hard-and-fast rules' we would find life much simpler. LD: You allow of no exceptions? LW: None! LD: Ah, what a fascinating Puritan you are, LW. LW: The adjective was unnecessary, LD.

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Thinking, Lds

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• When the copulative kai [`and'] connects two nouns of the same case, [viz. nouns (either substantive or adjective, or participles), of personal description, respecting office, dignity, affinity, or connexion, and attributes, properties, or qualities, good or ill], if the article [ho], or any of its cases, precedes the first of the said nouns or participles, and is not repeated before the second noun or participle, the latter always relates to the same person that is expressed or described by the first noun or participle: i.e. it denotes a farther description of the first-named person.

  Granville Sharp

  Two, Office, Quality

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• I know I look good. The regular adjectives that come my way - sexy, hot, dusky, bong bombshell I love them.

  Bipasha Basu

  Sexy, Bombshells, Hot

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• I have been called 'Bongshell' the day I stepped into showbiz. So, any adjective coming my way, I take it positively. Sometimes it's also entertaining, but I don't feel bad about it. I'm a proud woman.

  Bipasha Basu

  Proud, Way, Sometimes

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• A relativist is an individual who doesn't know the difference between an adjective and an adverb.

  Bill Gaede

  Differences, Individual, Adverbs

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• A mathematician is a magician who converts adjectives into nouns: continuous into continuum, infinite into infinity, infinitesimal into location, 0D into point, 1D into line, curved into geodesic.

  Bill Gaede

  Location, Infinity, Nouns

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• Whatever you want to say, there is only one word to express it, only one verb to give it movement, only one adjective to qualify it.

  Guy de Maupassant

  Writing, Giving, Verbs

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• Acting, to me, has been many things: It's a business, and it's a craft, and it's a political act - it's whatever adjective is most applicable.

  Adam Driver

  Political, Acting, Crafts

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• Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry

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• My Spanish is getting a little bit loose. Sometimes I go to Spain and after I've been talking with my folks for a while... you start changing the verb for the adjective, for example, which is a common thing between Spanish and English. I change that sometimes but after a couple days there, boom, I'm back.

  Antonio Banderas

  Change, Couple, Talking

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• Every team has kind of a style or adjectives people use to describe the game that the team plays.

  Rachel Martin

  Team, Games, Play

  "U.S. Women's Soccer Team Prepares For World Cup". "Weekend Edition Sunday" with Rachel Martin, www.npr.org. May 17, 2015.

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• Genius, throughout history, has been found difficult to classify because it varies in amount: It's rare to find a genius in the context of the noun, but most people, if not all, have a bit of genius in them in the context of the adjective.

  Criss Jami

  People, Genius, Nouns

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.31, Criss Jami

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• I am still studying verbs and the mystery of how they connect nouns. I am more suspicious of adjectives than at any other time in all my born days.

  Carl Sandburg

  Verbs, Nouns, Study

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.31, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The secret of force in writing lies not so much in the pedigree of nouns and adjectives and verbs, as in having something that you believe in to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it.

  James Russell Lowell

  Lying, Believe, Writing

  James Russell Lowell (1870). “Among my Books, etc”, p.162

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• anything being perceived as being superior takes the noun. And everything that isn't, that's judged to be inferior, requires an adjective. So there are black novelists and novelists. There are women physicians and physicians. Male nurses and nurses.

  Gloria Steinem

  Nurse, Racism, Black

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• Not every oak has to be gnarled, every detective hard-bitten. The adjective that exists solely as a decoration is a self-indulgence for the writer and an obstacle for the reader.

  William Zinsser

  Self, Detectives, Obstacles

  William Knowlton Zinsser (1980). “On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, HarperCollins Publishers

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