Dictionary Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• 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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• Walt Whitman, he who laid end to end words never seen in each other's company before outside of a dictionary.

  David Lodge

  Ends, Company, Walt

  'Changing Places' (1975) ch. 5

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• One piece of advice can be universally handed out, and it applies equally to speaking, understanding, reading, and writing. If in the course of any of these language activities, you run across words whose meaning or use baffles you, don't by-pass them. Look them up in the dictionary and familiarize yourself with them.

  Mario Pei

  Running, Reading, Writing

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• Me? Well, I don't know, I must go to a dictionary and learn what a crook is. I've never been a crook.

  Jacob Zuma

  Crooks, Ridiculous, Wells

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• You will be surprised to learn how some very knowing people have misunderstood Plotto. On glancing at it, some of the intelligentia have jumped at the false conclusion, that Plotto is a dictionary of situations, a mechanism that yields a cut and dried plot by the mere use of a thumb index. Plotto, to the contrary, merely suggests the situations for the plot, explains what is to be done through Purpose and Obstacle and even offers suggestions as to the way in which it should be done.

  William Wallace Cook

  Cutting, Yield, Knowing

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• The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.

  Anais Nin

  Book, Writing, Journey

  "French Writers of the Past" by Carol A. Dingle, (p. 126), 2000.

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• The English language has about 450,000 commonly used words, but more may be needed. What to you call someone who has lost a sibling or had a miscarriage? Or a gay person whose partner has died? Or an elderly person who has lost every friend and relative? So many heartaches can't be found in the dictionary.

  Jeffrey Zaslow

  Sibling, Miscarriage, Gay

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• I wonder what the difference between love and control is, but I'm afraid to look those words up in a dictionary.

  Kevin Sampsell

  Differences, Looks, Wonder

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• The English language was carefully, carefully cobbled together by three blind dudes and a German dictionary

  Dave Kellett

  Together, Three, Brilliant

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• The much vaunted male logic isn't logical, because they display prejudices against half the human race that are considered prejudices according to any dictionary definition.

  Eva Figes

  Race, Glowing, Males

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• Dictionary: The universe in alphabetical order.

  Anatole France

  Order, Alphabetical Order, Universe

  Anatole France (1924). “The Works of Anatole France”

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• I hope that I state your case fairly: One of my great fears is misrepresenting you, even to myself, now that you are not here to set me right. The truth is that you did not believe in idealism. All love was suspect; even a saint's was just differed self-interest. And it was impossible to argue without sounding either sentimental or naive. Cynicism has all the smart words on it's side; idealism uses a nursery school dictionary. And you studied early to disguise your childhood pain. But it is not universal.

  Michael Arditti

  Pain, Smart, Believe

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• What I do know is, in little more than 30 years, we have gone from a nation where the “quiet enjoyment” of one’s private property was a sacred right, to a day when the so-called property “owner” faces a hovering hoard of taxmen and regulators threatening to lien, foreclose, and “go to auction” at the first sign of private defiance of their collective will ... a relationship between government and private property rights which my dictionary defines as “fascism.”

  Vin Suprynowicz

  Rights, Government, Years

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• The word impossible has been and must remain deleted from our dictionary.

  Ingvar Kamprad

  Impossible, Has Beens

  "The philosophy" by Ingvar Kamprad, www.theguardian.com. June 16, 2004.

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• If you look up feminist in the dictionary, it just means someone who believes men and women have equal rights.

  Aziz Ansari

  Believe, Mean, Men

  "Aziz Ansari Explains Why We Should All Be Feminists" by Emily Zemler, www.elle.com. October 8, 2014.

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• Weird itself, even in the dictionary, is just something that is different and unexplainable. A weirdo is someone who follows their heart. Im definitely weird, aint nothing wrong with that.

  Kid Cudi

  Heart, Different, Weirdo

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• Usually I try to be there by six. Everything has been taken off the walls so that there's nothing to arrest my sight. On the bed I have Roget's Thesaurus, a dictionary, a Bible, and a deck of playing cards.

  Toni Morrison

  Wall, Taken, Writing

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• There is a certain blend of courage, integrity, character and principle which has no satisfactory dictionary name but has been called different things at different times in different countries. Our American name for it is "guts."

  Louis Adamic

  Country, Courage, Integrity

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