Nouns Quotes - Page 6

• The worst of this sorry bunch of semi-educated losers are those who seem to glory in being irritated by nouns becoming verbs. How dense and deaf to language development do you have to be? If you don’t like nouns becoming verbs, then for heaven’s sake avoid Shakespeare who made a doing-word out of a thing-word every chance he got. He TABLED the motion and CHAIRED the meeting in which nouns were made verbs

  Stephen Fry

  Sorry, Heaven, Language Development

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• Whatever one wishes to say, there is one noun only by which to express it, one verb only to give it life, one adjective only which will describe it. One must search until one has discovered them, this noun, this verb, this adjective, and never rest content with approximations, never resort to trickery, however happy, or to vulgarism, in order to dodge the difficulty.

  Guy de Maupassant

  Order, Giving, Wish

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• Whatever the thing you wish to say, there is but one word to express it, but one verb to give it movement, but one adjective to qualify it; you must seek until you find this noun, this verb, this adjective.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Writing, Giving, Wish

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• A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exit in nature. Things are only the terminal points, or rather the meeting points of actions, cross sections cut through actions, snapshots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract motion, be possible in nature. The eye sees noun and verb as one, things in motion, motion in things.

  Ernest Fenollosa

  Eye, Cutting, Doe

  Ernest Fenollosa, Ezra Pound, Jonathan Stalling, Lucas Klein (2008). “The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry: A Critical Edition”, p.82, Fordham Univ Press

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• Love isn't a state of perfect caring, it is an active noun like struggle.

  Fred Rogers

  Struggle, Caring, Love Is

  Fred Rogers (1995). “You Are Special: Words of Wisdom for All Ages from a Beloved Neighbor”, p.21, Penguin

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• Theres only three things [Giuliani] mentions in a sentence—a noun, a verb, and 9/11

  Joe Biden

  Three, Verbs, Sentences

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• And why do we reduce the beauty of relating to relationship? Why are we in such a hurry? - because to relate is insecure, and relationship is a security, relationship has a certainty. Relating is just a meeting of two strangers, maybe just an overnight stay and in the morning we say good-bye. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow? And we are so afraid that we want to make it certain, we want to make it predictable. We would like tomorrow to be according to our ideas; we don't allow it freedom to have its own say. So we immediately reduce every verb to a noun.

  Rajneesh

  Relationship, Morning, Insecure

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• I believe in love the verb, not the noun.

  Greg Behrendt

  Believe, Verbs, I Believe

  Greg Behrendt, Liz Tuccillo (2009). “He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys”, p.161, Simon and Schuster

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• Insurgent, he says. Noun. A person who acts in opposition to the established authority, who is not necessarily regarded as a belligerent.

  Veronica Roth

  Authority, Persons, Opposition

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• What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.

  Anne Carson

  Somewhere Else, Names, Greek

  Anne Carson (1999). “Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse”, Vintage

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• We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream'.

  Richard Dawkins

  Memories, Science, Names

  Richard Dawkins (2016). “The Selfish Gene: 40th Anniversary edition”, p.249, Oxford University Press

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• Terrorist', noun: 1. Someone my government tells me is a terrorist; 2. Someone my President decides to kill.

  Glenn Greenwald

  Government, President, Terrorist

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• You make it a production. Slam doors. Knock things over. Scream. But I just leave. Even if I'm still standing there, I leave. I am refusing you. I am denying you. I am an adjective that is quickly turning into a noun.

  David Levithan

  Doors, Adjectives, Scream

  David Levithan (2011). “The Lover's Dictionary: A Novel”, p.89, Macmillan

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• Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.

  Eric Weiner

  People, Office, Family And Friends

  Eric Weiner (2008). “The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World”, p.179, Hachette UK

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• Hyacinth,” Lady Bridgerton said in a vaguely disapproving voice, “do try to speak in complete sentences.” Hyacinth looked at her mother with a surprised expression. “Biscuits. Are. Good.” She cocked her head to the side. “Noun. Verb. Adjective.” “Hyacinth.” “Noun. Verb. Adjective.” Colin said, wiping a crumb from his grinning face. “Sentence. Is. Correct.

  Julia Quinn

  Mother, Expression, Voice

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• Instead I will say, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths." These are worth it. These are what I have come for.

  Margaret Atwood

  Dream, Sunset, Shoes

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Good Bones and Simple Murders”, p.138, Nan A. Talese

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• I am the androgyne, I am the living mind you fail to describe in your dead language the lost noun, the verb surviving only in the infinitive the letters of my name are written under the lids of the newborn child

  Adrienne Rich

  Children, Newborn Child, Names

  Adrienne Rich (2013). “Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972”, p.22, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.

  Martin Amis

  Love, Black, World

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• The Psalms wrap nouns and verbs around our pain better than any other book.

  Joni Eareckson Tada

  Pain, Book, Verbs

  Joni Eareckson Tada (2012). “Anger”, p.12, Rose Publishing Inc

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• Observations,” he says. “Four imperial Unseelie guards were the only commonality I was able to isolate endemic to both scenes.” They’d been standing, armed, at the dock doors, overseeing the delivery. He gives me a sidewise look. “Wow. That was, like, a whole sentence. With nouns and verbs and connective tissue. Endemic. Fancy word.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Doors, Giving, Verbs

  Karen Marie Moning (2012). “Iced: Fever Series”, p.89, Delacorte Press

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• Who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame

  Allen Ginsberg

  Intelligent, Jumping, Space

  Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”

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• His sentences didn't seem to have any verbs, which was par for a politician. All nouns, no action.

  Jennifer Crusie

  Verbs, Action, Politician

  Jennifer Crusie (2011). “Charlie All Night”, p.87, HQN Books

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• There are a lot of other things besides nouns.

  Gertrude Stein

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• So you actually need spectacles,” Leo finally said. “Of course I do,” Marks said crossly. “Why would I wear spectacles if I didn’t need them?” “I thought they might be part of your disguise.” “My disguise?” “Yes, Marks, disguise. A noun describing a means of concealing someone’s identity. Often used by clowns and spies. And now apparently governesses. Good God, can anything be ordinary for my family?

  Lisa Kleypas

  Mean, Spy, Identity

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• A trick I picked up from reading Frank Miller scripts: ... He tended to always start his panel caps sometimes with a general noun and a verb. 'He weeps,' and then there'd be whatever else. And a couple of collaborators of mine have always said that the first sentence of my script is for them, and everything else that comes after is for me. Which is true, that's very much how I try to write. The first line is just to get the physical action down, and then I'll kind of drift off into whatever else I see in my head and they can take it or leave it.

  Matt Fraction

  Couple, Reading, Writing

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