Lexicon Quotes

• I've been 6'4'' since I was 12. Goofy is somewhere in the lexicon.

  Jason Segel

  Goofy

  15 Copy quote

• Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Clever, Intelligent, People

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• Immigration, a lexicon. You're a 'migrant' when you're very poor; 'immigrant' when you're not so poor; and 'expat' when you're rich.

  Laila Lalami

  Migrants, Immigration, Rich

  Twitter post from Apr 8, 2013

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• The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Reading, Different, May

  J M Coetzee (2015). “Diary of a Bad Year”, p.23, Random House

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• A word into the silence thrown always finds its echo somewhere where silence opens hidden lexicons.

  Dejan Stojanovic

  Echoes, Silence, Thrown

  "Emily Dickinson". Poem by Dejan Stojanovic,

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• Every single aspect of a text requires very careful choices and rigorous evaluation. Style is employed - or deployed - for a reason. It's purposeful. Form and aesthetics are part of meaning-making. Ideally, a writer would have mastery over a wide variety of rhetorical gestures and tonalities, our lexicon and punctuation system, our grammar, and all the riches of a liberal and literary education.

  C.E. Morgan

  Choices, Style, Mastery

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• In the lexicon of youth which fate reserves for a bright manhood, there is no such word as fail.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Failure, Fate, Youth

  Richelieu act 2, sc. 2 (1839)

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• In the lexicon of the political class, the word 'sacrifice' means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.

  George Will

  Mean, Sacrifice, Class

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• Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

  Clark Gable

  Movie, Badass, Wind

  "Fictional character: Rhett Butler". "Gone with the Wind", 1939.

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• You can't handle the truth!

  Jack Nicholson

  Movie, Memorable, Great Year

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• Stars ink your fingers
  with a lexicon of flame
  blazing rare knowledge.

  Aberjhani

  Stars, Flames, Ink

  Aberjhani (2010). “The River of Winged Dreams”, p.67, Lulu.com

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• Psychobabble is... a set of repetitive verbal formalities that kills off the very spontaneity, candor, and understanding it pretends to promote. It's an idiom that reduces psychological insight to a collection of standardized observations, that provides a frozen lexicon to deal with an infinite variety of problems.

  Richard Rosen

  Understanding, Frozen, Jargon

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• Silks, velvets, calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies.

  Jonathan Swift

  Fashion, Female, Velvet

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.1604, Delphi Classics

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• In the American political lexicon, 'change' always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.

  Ron Paul

  War, Mean, Government

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• Some people simply use their faith as a lexicon of behavioral reasoning; without that they would be forced to face their own moral and ethical failings honestly according to a secular code of right and wrong.

  Deborah Feldman

  People, Would Be, Use

  Deborah Feldman (2014). “Exodus: A Memoir”, p.75, Penguin

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• Goethe said, "The author whom a lexicon can keep up with is worth nothing"; Somerset Maugham says that the finest compliment he ever received was a letter in which one of his readers said: "I read your novel without having to look up a single word in the dictionary." These writers, plainly, lived in different worlds.

  Randall Jarrell

  Different, Looks, World

  "No Other Book: Selected Essays". Book by Randall Jarrell. Chapter: "The Obscurity of the Poet", p. 13, 1999.

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• A determination or an effect within a system which is no longer that of a presence but of a diffrance, a system that no longer tolerates the opposition of activity and passivity, nor that of cause and effect, or of indetermination and determination, etc., such that in designating consciousness as an effect or a determination, one continues - for strategic reasons that can be more or less lucidly deliberated and systematically calculated - to operate according to the lexicon of that which one is de-limiting.

  Jacques Derrida

  Determination, Etc, Causes

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• Every scientist should remove the word 'impossible' from their lexicon.

  Christopher Reeve

  Impossible, Scientist, Should

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• The general advertisers and their agencies know almost nothing for sure, because they cannot measure the results of their advertising. They worship at the altar of creativity, which really means 'originality': The most dangerous word in the lexicon of advertising

  David Ogilvy

  Mean, Creativity, Agency

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• With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasized a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Wisdom, Practice, Class

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (1964). “A Martin Luther King Treasury”

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• [Bacteria] have an incredibly complicated chemical lexicon that ... allows bacteria to be multicellular. In the spirit of TED they're doing things together because it makes a difference.

  Bonnie Bassler

  Motivation, Inspiration, Differences

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• The new, old, and constantly changing language of politics is a lexicon of conflict and drama?ridicule and reproach?pleading and persuasion.

  William Safire

  Drama, Language, Conflict

  1968 Safire's Political Dictionary, introduction.

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• To know the piano is to know the universe. To master the piano is to master the universe. The spectrum of piano sound acts as a prism through which all musical and non-musical sounds may be filtered. The grunts of sheep, the braying of mules, the popping of champagne corks, the sighs of unrequited love, not to mention the full lexicon of sounds available to all other instruments-including whistles, scrapes, bleatings, caresses, thuds, hoots, plus sweet and sour pluckings-fall within the sovereignty of this most bare and dissembling chameleon.

  Russell Sherman

  Sweet, Fall, Unrequited Love

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• Drunk, Jane spoke as though she were Nancy Drew. I was a fool for a girl with a dainty lexicon.

  Michael Chabon

  Girl, Drunk, Fool

  Michael Chabon (2011). “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh”, p.32, Open Road Media

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• The elective franchise is withheld from one half of its citizens...because the word 'people,' by an unparalleled exhibition of lexicon graphical acrobatics, has been turned and twisted to mean all who were shrewd and wise enough to have themselves born boys instead of girls, or who took the trouble to be born white instead of black.

  Mary Church Terrell

  Girl, Wise, Mean

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