Dictionary Quotes - Page 5

• 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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• 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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• 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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• What advice do you have for writers working on their first novels?If you feel called to write a book, consider it a gift. Look around you. What assistance is the universe offering you as support? I was given an amazing mentor, a poet, Eleanor Drewry Dolan, who taught me the importance of every word. To my utter amazement, there were times she found it necessary to consult three dictionaries to evaluate one word.

  Kathleen Grissom

  Book, Writing, Offering

  Kathleen Grissom (2014). “The Kitchen House: A Novel”, p.376, Simon and Schuster

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• Some People think 'coven' is a word for a group of witches, and it's true that's what the dictionary says. But the real word for a group of witches is 'an argument'.

  Terry Pratchett

  Real, Thinking, People

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

  Jennifer Flackett

  Beautiful, Tomorrow, Little Manhattan

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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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• In Spain, attempting to obtain a chicken salad sandwich, you wind up with a dish whose name, when you look it up in your Spanish-English dictionary, turns out to mean: Eel with big abcess.

  Dave Barry

  Food, Mean, Wind

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• 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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• 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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• We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.

  Eric Hoffer

  Needs, Want, Few Words

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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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• Life is our dictionary.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Life Is

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1107, Delphi Classics

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• All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Writing, Matter, Story Writers

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• What I liked about Greece was [...] the impressive force of the language itself, unconfined by dictionaries, spoken in the streets, in cafés and in the country.

  Peter Levi

  Country, Language, Force

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• Now that I can see it's the queen's new clothes Now that I can hear all your poison prose Now that I can talk with my tongue unfroze I'm not so sure of Santa or the buck tooth fairy There are no words for me inside your dictionary

  Andy Partridge

  Queens, Clothes, Teeth

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• If you look up the definition of greatness in the dictionary, it will say Michael Jordan.

  Elgin Baylor

  Basketball, Greatness, Jordan

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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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• We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.

  John Cage

  Music, School, Two

  "Autobiographical Statement". www.johncage.org. April 1990.

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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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