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Dictionary Quotes

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Dictionary Quotes

“According to the dictionary, knock has two definitions: "to strike something with a sharp blow," and "to find fault with, a harsh and often petty criticism." Perhaps in human relationships both of these meanings could apply. Almost all men will respond to sincere praise and rebel at harsh and cutting criticisms.”

MenHumansTwoCuttingCriticismPraiseFaultsDefinitionsBlowStrikesSincereRebelHarshPettyDictionaryHuman RelationsHuman Relationships
Author:Marvin J. Ashton
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“The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic, living institutions transplanted from English soil. Their significance is vital, not formal; it is to be gathered not simply by taking the words and a dictionary, but by considering their origin and the line of their growth.”

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Author:Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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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).”

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Book:Selected Letters, 1917-1961
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“Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from that tribe. That's what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is - One Who Killed Our Lord. And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.”

KnowsShouldSeemsActionChristianLordCrimeAncientJewDuesLimitationTribesJudaismDictionaryOur LordPaganStatutesUnrelentingGaitDeuces
Author:Lenny Bruce
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“I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a "surly, illmannered, badtempered fellow." ... Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon.”

Has BeensFactsHateNationsSinCommonFireTroubleHonorFellowsIllCommon SenseIdeologyHypocrisyNativeNervesSheepCantDictionaryDogmaticJackassesSurlyCurmudgeon
Author:Edward Abbey
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“When compiling his great dictionary, the young Noah Webster travels to the Himalayas, where he climbs to the cave of the world's wises man. 'O, great sage,' he says, 'tell me the meaning of life.' The sage sits Noah at his feet and, with great solemnity, commences to unfold the meaning of life. When finished, he places a hand on the young man's shoulder and says, 'Do you have any other questions, my son?' Noah flips a page in his notebook and says, 'You wouldn't know the meaning of lift, would you?'”

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Author:Robert Breault
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“Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance.”

LightCertainLanguagePerfectResultsClearElementsEarsHarmonyComplexesSatisfactionCombinationToneTransitionUnitsVocabularyDictionaryTextbooksIntervalsOdorLanternsDissonanceSinfulnessConsonance
Book:Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons
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“It becomes 'one's own' only when the speaker populates it with his own intentions, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people's mouths, in other people's contexts, serving other people's intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one's own”

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Author:Mikhail Bakhtin
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“To observe the world carefully, to write a lot and often, on a schedule if necessary, to use the dictionary a lot, to look up word origins, to analyze closely the work of writers you admire, to read not only contemporaries but writers of the past, to learn at least one foreign language, to live an interesting life outside of writing.”

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Author:Lydia Davis
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“The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world.”

MenWorldNeedsKindDoeChristianFacesTurnsChristAchieveDyingRevolutionDependsIdealsTablesDefinitionsBehaveConfusedOne ManCooperationCheeksCopBulletsDictionaryAnarchismAnarchistBallotsSecessionTurn The Other CheekChrist Like
Book:The Book of Ammon
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“Any grand new dictionary ought itself to be a democratic product, a book that demonstrated the primacy of individual freedoms, of the notion that one could use words freely, as one liked, without hard and fast rules of lexical conduct.”

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Book:The surgeon of Crowthorne: a tale of murder, madness and the love of words
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“There is no English equivalent for the French word flâneur. Cassell's dictionary defines flâneur as a stroller, saunterer, drifter but none of these terms seems quite accurate. There is no English equivalent for the term, just as there is no Anglo-Saxon counterpart of that essentially Gallic individual, the deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency, who, being French and therefore frugal, wastes nothing, including his time which he spends with the leisurely discrimination of a gourmet, savoring the multiple flavors of his city.”

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Author:Cornelia Otis Skinner
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“Opinions are not to be learned by rote, like the letters of an alphabet, or the words of a dictionary. They are conclusions to be formed, and formed by each individual in the sacred and free citadel of the mind, and there enshrined beyond the arm of law to reach, or force to shake; ay! and beyond the right of impertinent curiosity to violate, or presumptuous arrogance to threaten.”

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Book:Course of Popular Lectures,
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