Dictionary Quotes - page 6

For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes and Kant) at sight without a dictionary. That meant Germany for my first summer vacation, to learn the thorny language on my own. (Paul Engle)
Always remember that striving and struggle precede success, even in the dictionary. View quote
Sarah Ban Breathnach
I'm going to be so normal that when people look up normal in the dictionary, my name will be there. View quote
Wendy Mass
The dictionary doesn't have individual contributions. It's like building a cathedral. The workers are unknown. But one of the things I tend to do is suggest that it might be interesting to have examples of things that aren't from France. If it's a wind, which we worked on recently, does it always have to be the mistral? What about the winds of elsewhere? How about zephyrs or siroccos? In French, there exists an enormous variety of classifications, proverbs, and witticisms about winds. There are winds that push ships as well as winds that come from the gut-the noisy, bodily winds of Rabelais. All shadings have to be in the dictionary. View quote
Dany Laferrière
Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. to his daughter Martha. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality. View quote
William James
There is no good Dictionary, not even a good Index, that is not in this sense priceless, for it has honestly furthered the work of the world, saving labour to others, setting an example to successors. View quote
George Henry Lewes
Since some ignorant dupes of these Marxists denounce as "McCarthyist” anyone who points out their ideological inspiration, it deserves to be emphasized that "eminent historians” like Romila Thapar, R. S. Sharma and Irfan Habib are certified as Marxists in standard Marxist sources like Tom Bottomore's Dictionary of Marxist Thought. During the official historians' Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute in 1991, the pro-mosque team's argumentation and several other anti-temple pamphlets were published by the People's Publishing House, a Communist Party outfit. One of the recent textbook innovations most furiously denounced as "saffronization” was the truism that Lenin's armed seizing of power in October/November 1917 was a "coup d'état”. And in early 2003, while they were unchaining all their devils against glasnost, the Marxists ruling West Bengal deleted from a textbook a passage in which Mahatma Gandhi's biographer Louis Fischer called Stalin "at least as ruthless as Hitler.”. View quote
Koenraad Elst
A physicist friend of mine once said that in facing death, he drew some consolation from the reflection that he would never again have to look up the word "hermeneutics" in the dictionary. View quote
Steven Weinberg
The word ... becomes "one's own" only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, 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. View quote
Mikhail Bakhtin
Letter to his wife (2 June 1863), as quoted in "The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations" (2005) edited by Hugh Rawson and Margaret Miner. (William Tecumseh Sherman)
NONSENSE, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
IMBECILITY, n. A kind of divine inspiration, or sacred fire affecting censorious critics of this dictionary. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
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. View quote
George Bernard Shaw
The dictionary contains no metaphors. View quote
Paul Ricœur
Strike and struggle precede success, even in the dictionary. View quote
Christian Slater
If you will take the trouble to consult your dictionary, you will find that demons may be either good or bad, like any other class of beings. View quote
L. Frank Baum
People are under the impression that dictionaries legislate language. What a dictionary does is keep track of usages over time. View quote
Steven Pinker
Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science. View quote
Laurence Sterne
The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned. View quote
Anaïs Nin
Believing in the full social, political, and economic quality of women, which is what the dictionary says "feminism" means, is enough to make a revolution in itself. (Gloria Steinem)
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. View quote
Saffron Burrows
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 similies (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition. View quote
Ernest Hemingway
Reckless,” he said. "You know, when I first showed up at the Institute, Alec called me reckless so many times that I went and looked it up in the dictionary. View quote
Cassandra Clare
When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary. View quote
William Safire