Dictionary Quotes - Page 4

• I have just been refining the room in which I sit, yet I sometimes doubt that a writer should refine or improve his workroom by so much as a dictionary: one thing leads to another and the first thing you know he has a stuffed chair and is fast asleep in it.

  E. B. White

  Writing, Doubt, Rooms

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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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• Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Past, Errors, Language

  Alfred North Whitehead (2014). “Science and Philosophy”, p.57, Open Road Media

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• My lad chewed and swallowed a dictionary. We gave him Epsom salts - but we can't get a word out of him.

  Les Dawson

  Salt, Lad

  Les Dawson (2012). “Les Dawson's Joke Book”, p.22, Michael O'Mara Books

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• I'm going to be so normal that when people look up normal in the dictionary, my name will be there.

  Wendy Mass

  Names, People, Looks

  Wendy Mass (2008). “A Mango-Shaped Space”, p.21, Hachette UK

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• Look up the definition of rejection in the dictionary, get really comfortable with it, and then maybe you can go into acting.

  Loni Anderson

  Rejection, Acting, Looks

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I'll always take Scrabble and chess if I'm going filming. But I do have the Scrabble dictionary, which can be infuriating for other players.

  Saffron Burrows

  Player, Chess, Scrabble

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• I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violent, and I am not violent.)

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Style, Technique

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Jul 04, 2014

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• I always knew Gordon Lightfoot was a really great songwriter, but his stuff even sounds better and better all the time. It's just so really good to me. It's just like that's what should be in a dictionary, you know, next to a really good contempory folk song, is a Gordon Lightfoot song.

  John Prine

  Song, Sound, Stuff

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• Nature is a dictionary; one draws words from it.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Draws

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• The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

  Alain de Botton

  Love, Two, People

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• Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries.

  Gilbert Murray

  Greek, Definitions, Language

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• Are there any more beautiful words in the English dictionary than 'see you tomorrow?

  Jennifer Flackett

  Beautiful, Tomorrow, Little Manhattan

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• I am very sorry, but I cannot learn languages. I have tried hard, only to find that men of ordinary capacity can learn Sanskrit in less time that it takes me to buy a German Dictionary

  George Bernard Shaw

  Sorry, Men, Ordinary

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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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• Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today. Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction. See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.

  Carl Sandburg

  Vocabulary, Diction, Today

  Carl Sandburg (2015). “Honey and Salt”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.

  William Safire

  Book, Yale, Editors

  "'To - Be' or Not 'To - Be'" by William Safire, www.nytimes.com. November 26, 2006.

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• The thing is, it's my own fault. I just can't put up with a person that won't go out of his way for me. And that's what a man is. Somebody that won't go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Men, Way, Faults

  Barbara Kingsolver (2011). “Pigs in Heaven”, p.289, Faber & Faber

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• 

  Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

  David Bowie

  Book, Reading, Oxford

  "FMO’s Final Interview With David Bowie". Interview with Johnnny, fmobserver.com. March 4, 2016.

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• Few things build a person up like affirmation. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, Third College Edition (Simon and Schuster, 1991), the word affirm comes from ad firmare, which means “to make firm.” So when you affirm people, you make firm within them the things you see about them. Do that often enough, and the belief that solidifies within them will become stronger than the doubts they have about themselves.

  John C. Maxwell

  Mean, College, People

  John C. Maxwell (2011). “The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization”, p.115, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Might not hurt you to pick up a book, just as an experiment." Whatever. I looked up the definition for 'nerd' in the dictionary. Know what it said?" "I bet you'll tell me." " 'If you're reading this, you are one.' " You're a riot.

  Brandon Mull

  Hurt, Book, Reading

  Brandon Mull, Brandon Dorman (2009). “Grip of the Shadow Plague”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

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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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• [Instead of collecting stamps, he collected dictionaries and encyclopaedias:] Because you can learn more from them.

  Linus Pauling

  Learning, Science, Stamps

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