Dictionary Quotes - Page 2

• My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.

  Beverly Cleary

  Reading, Book, Writing

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• All the words you need are to be found in the dictionary. All you have to do is put them in the right order.

  Emma Darcy

  Order, Needs, Found

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• I don't know. Sometimes I try to say what's on my mind and it comes out sounding like I ate a dictionary and I'm shitting pages. Sorry

  J. R. Moehringer

  Sorry, Writing, Mind

  J. R. Moehringer (2005). “The Tender Bar: A Memoir”, p.149, Hachette UK

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• When compiling his great dictionary, the young Noah Webster travels to the Himalayas, where he climbs to the cave of the world's wises man. 'O, great sage,' he says, 'tell me the meaning of life.' The sage sits Noah at his feet and, with great solemnity, commences to unfold the meaning of life. When finished, he places a hand on the young man's shoulder and says, 'Do you have any other questions, my son?' Noah flips a page in his notebook and says, 'You wouldn't know the meaning of lift, would you?'

  Robert Breault

  Life, Notebook, Son

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• Cynicism has all the smart words on it's side; idealism uses a nursery school dictionary.

  Michael Arditti

  Smart, School, Nurse

  Michael Arditti (1996). “Pagan and Her Parents”

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• A dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language.

  Giacomo Leopardi

  Language, Embrace, Tapestry

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• I finally got around to reading the dictionary. Turns out the Zebra did it.

  Steven Wright

  Zebras, Reading, Turns

  "The Simpsons", TV Series (1989– ). "The Last Temptation of Krust", www.imdb.com. 1998.

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• I too turned to Webster's Dictionary and it defined Harvard University as a season for gathering crops.

  Andy Samberg

  Funny Graduation, Gathering, Crops

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• Dictionaries are always fun, but not always reassuring.

  M. F. K. Fisher

  Fun, Language, Reassuring

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• To define is to limit, to set boundaries, to compare and to contrast, and for this reason, the universe, the all, seems to defy definition....Just as no one in his senses would look for the morning news in a dictionary, no one should use speaking and thinking to find out what cannot be spoken or thought.

  Alan Watts

  Morning, Thinking, Limits

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• Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything Black ugly and evil. Look in your dictionaries and see the synonyms of the word Black. It's always something degrading and low and sinister. Look at the word White, it's always something pure, high and clean.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Beautiful, Lying, White

  "The Unfathomably Weird Case of Rachel Doležal" by Andrew Stewart, www.counterpunch.org. June 16, 2015.

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• You know you're an Arizona native when you have to look up "mass transit" in the dictionary.

  Paul Johnson

  Mass Transit, Arizona, Looks

  "You Know You're an Arizona Native, When". Book by Don Dedera, 1993.

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• Gratitude is a fool's word; we find it in the dictionary, but it is not in the heart of man.

  Honore de Balzac

  Gratitude, Heart, Men

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• Western dictionaries define secularism as absence of religion but Indian secularism does not mean irreligiousness.It means profusion of religions.

  Shashi Tharoor

  Mean, Doe, Absence

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• A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise.

  John Henry Newman

  Wisdom, Memories, Would Be

  Blessed John Henry Newman, Aeterna Press (1844). “Sermons: Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief”, p.182, Aeterna Press

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• I'm very sensitive to the English language. I studied the dictionary obsessively when I was a kid and collect old dictionaries. Words, I think, are very powerful and they convey an intention.

  Drew Barrymore

  Powerful, Kids, Thinking

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• You do not find knowledge in a dictionary, only information.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Information, Management

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• The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic, living institutions transplanted from English soil. Their significance is vital, not formal; it is to be gathered not simply by taking the words and a dictionary, but by considering their origin and the line of their growth.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Government, Essence, Growth

  "Gompers v. United States, 233 U.S. 604, 610". Judicial opinion, 1914.

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• Impossibility is a dictionary word.

  Sri Chinmoy

  Impossibility

  "They're Not Heavy; They're His People; 72-Year-Old Sri Chinmoy Offers An Uplift Beyond the Spiritual" by Corey Kilgannon, www.nytimes.com. July 1, 2004.

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• The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries.

  Voltaire

  Writing, Facts, Quotations

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• I want to preach the gospel so plainly that men can come from the factories and not have to bring along a dictionary.

  Billy Sunday

  Men, Want, Factories

  Billy Sunday, William Thomas Ellis (1917). “Billy Sunday, the Man and His Message: With His Own Words which Have Won Thousands for Christ”

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• Rap music... sounds like somebody feeding a rhyming dictionary to a popcorn popper.

  Tom Robbins

  Funny, Rap, Sound

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.226, Bantam

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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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• A word in a dictionary is very much like a car in a mammoth motor show - full of potential but temporarily inactive.

  Anthony Burgess

  Car, Shows, Motor

  Anthony Burgess (1964). “Language made plain”

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• Any grand new dictionary ought itself to be a democratic product, a book that demonstrated the primacy of individual freedoms, of the notion that one could use words freely, as one liked, without hard and fast rules of lexical conduct.

  Simon Winchester

  Book, Use, Individual

  Simon Winchester (1998). “The surgeon of Crowthorne: a tale of murder, madness and the love of words”

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