Dictionary quotes
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Nonsense, n. The objections that are urged against this excellent dictionary.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
Dictionary: The universe in alphabetical order.
-- Anatole France -
A word in a dictionary is very much like a car in a mammoth motor show - full of potential but temporarily inactive.
-- Anthony Burgess -
In the secret pocket, she often kept a small pocket dictionary, which she would take out whenever she encountered a word she did not know.
-- Daniel Handler -
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Dictionaries stop where the heart starts.
-- David Foenkinos -
Words fascinate me. They always have. For me, browsing in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank.
-- Eddie Cantor -
Nature is a dictionary; one draws words from it.
-- Eugene Delacroix -
For me there is no such word as luck in the dictionary,
-- Fabrice Muamba -
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Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.
-- Gertrude Stein -
A dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language.
-- Giacomo Leopardi -
The word gratitude is not part of the Hollywood dictionary.
-- Harry Cohn -
The word impossible has been and must remain deleted from our dictionary,
-- Ingvar Kamprad -
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There's no such thing as an unabridged dictionary.
-- Jack Lynch -
What's a depression? The dictionary says a depression is a dent. And what's a dent? Everybody knows a dent is a hole. And what's a hole? You tell me what's a hole! And I'll tell you that a hole is nothin'!
-- Jimmy Durante -
Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.
-- John Ralston Saul -
Republican comes in the dictionary just after reptile and just above repugnant.
-- Julia Roberts -
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I didn't even know what the word lesbian meant until I was called one... and then I had to look it up in the dictionary.
-- Kathleen Hanna -
This is a God who is not identified with the help of a dictionary but through a relationship.
-- Kathleen Norris -
Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.
-- Laurence Sterne -
My lad chewed and swallowed a dictionary. We gave him Epsom salts - but we can't get a word out of him.
-- Les Dawson -
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To open the dictionary of the Beyond and discover what one suspected, that the only word in it is nothing.
-- Mark Strand -
The dictionary is a wonderful thing, but you can't let it push you around.
-- Mary Norris -
The only place where compensation comes before service is in the dictionary or anywhere the government meddles.
-- Orrin Woodward -
The dictionary contains no metaphors.
-- Paul Ricoeur -
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Life is our dictionary.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson -
It is intolerance to speak of toleration. Away with the word from the dictionary!
-- Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau -
The trouble with the dictionary is that you have to know how a word is spelled before you can look it up to see how it is spelled.
-- Will Cuppy -
When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
-- William Safire -
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I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
-- Zadie Smith -
I think when dictionaries define words, there's a sort of hair-splitting that to most people doesn't make any sense, which is we're not describing what a thing is.
-- Kory Stamper -
Back in the 19th century, our marketing folks decided to play up the refined usage angle because prescriptivism was very popular: our dictionary is where you go to learn anything about anything. That really set the tone in North America for how people responded to dictionaries.
-- Kory Stamper -
Success brings poise, especially avoirdupois. Success comes before work only in the dictionary.
-- William Cranch Bond -
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I never understood whether the word 'amnesty' is correct or not. Maybe I am not very intelligent but I checked the dictionary to find the meaning.
-- Kapil Dev
