Dictionary Quotes

• I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Life, Reading

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• If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word.

  Dave Barry

  Literature, Enough, Bigs

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  Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Honesty, Integrity, Writing

  1847; quoted by propagandist and language maven William Safire, New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998.

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• Always remember that striving and struggle precede success even in the dictionary.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Success, Struggle, Inspiration

  Sarah Ban Breathnach (2012). “Simple Abundance”, Random House

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  The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

  Vince Lombardi

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

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• Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Inspirational, Positive, Wisdom

  "Famous Sayings and their Authors" by Edward Latham, (p. 138), 1906.

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• Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price.

  Vince Lombardi

  Motivational, Success, Football

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• A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.

  John Henry Newman

  Memories, Math, Mind

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• As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary.

  Charles de Lint

  Differences, People, Fiction

  "Dreams Underfoot : The Newford Collection". Book by Charles de Lint, 2003.

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• If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Humor, Writing

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• The word 'romance,' according to the dictionary, means excitement, adventure, and something extremely real. Romance should last a lifetime.

  Billy Graham

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Billy Graham (1966). “The Quotable Billy Graham”

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• Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Names, Patriotism, Ambitious

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.160, 谷月社

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• There is a breed of fashion models who weigh no more than an abridged dictionary.

  Dave Barry

  Fashion, Fashion Model, Models

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• IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Inspiration, Fire, Divinity

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.117, University of Georgia Press

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• Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

  Khalil Gibran

  Pain, Reading Poetry, Joy

  Khalil Gibran “The New Frontier and Sand and Foam”, Library of Alexandria

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• Dictionary: a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic

  Ambrose Bierce

  Growth, Language, Literary Devices

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “The Devil's Dictionary (or The Cynic's Wordbook: Unabridged with all the Definitions)”, p.42, e-artnow

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• Republican comes in the dictionary just after reptile and just above repugnant.

  Julia Roberts

  Reptiles, Republican

  "Hollywood’s Celebrity Bush Bashers" by Michelle Malkin, capitalismmagazine.com. March 24, 2001.

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• Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).

  Ernest Hemingway

  Time, Writing, Thinking

  Ernest Hemingway (1981). “Selected Letters, 1917-1961”

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• Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no can't in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestion, the raw material of possible poems and histories.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Reading, Suggestions

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• Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

  Samuel Johnson

  Lexicographer, Literature, Tracing

  Samuel Johnson, John Walker (1835). “Johnson's English Dictionary”, p.559

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• Words fascinate me. They always have. For me, browsing in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank.

  Eddie Cantor

  Writing, Library, Browsing

  Eddie Cantor (1959). “The way I see it”

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• We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.

  Mervyn Peake

  Printed Word, Black, Sound

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.230, The Overlook Press

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• The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

  Jean Cocteau

  Order, Literature, Masterpiece

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• If one were loyal to one's nation only because it was good and true ... one would not be loyal to any nation but to truth and goodness. The idea of patriotism would have no place either in our dictionaries or our lives.

  Max Eastman

  Ideas, Loyal, Goodness

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• But what is memory if not the language of feeling, a dictionary of faces and days and smells which repeat themselves like the verbs and adjectives in a speech, sneaking in behind the thing itself,into the pure present, making us sad or teaching us vicariously.

  Julio Cortazar

  Memories, Teaching, Smell

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.143, Everyman's Library

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