Dictionaries Quotes

35 quotes by 33 authors

I'm very sensitive to the English language. I studied the dictionary obsessively when I was a kid and collect old dictionaries. Words, I think, are… — Drew Barrymore
At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Beware of charisma . . . Representative Men; was Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1850 phrase for the great men in a democracy . . . Is… — Daniel J. Boorstin
I can't describe the feeling when I go down - it's down down down and there's never going to be an up again. And whatever… — John Marsden
And that brings us to tonight's word: Truthiness. Now I'm sure some of the word-police, the 'wordanistas' over at Websters, are gonna say, 'Hey, that's… — Stephen Colbert
I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violent, and I am not violent.) — Gerhard Richter
When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius… — William James
The makers of dictionaries are dependent upon specialists for their definitions. A specialist's definition may be true or it may be erroneous. But its truth… — Benjamin Tucker
Many moons ago dictionaries of quotations may have been less needed than they are today. In those good/bad old days, people walked around with entire… — Joseph Epstein
Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries. — Gilbert Murray
Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything Black ugly and evil. Look in your dictionaries and see the… — Martin Luther King, Jr.
What advice do you have for writers working on their first novels?If you feel called to write a book, consider it a gift. Look around… — Kathleen Grissom
We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something… — Eric Hoffer
Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities. — Alfred North Whitehead
Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words. — Samuel Johnson
I love learning about different dialects and I own all sorts of regional and time-period slang dictionaries. I often browse through relevant ones while writing… — Ron Rash
[Instead of collecting stamps, he collected dictionaries and encyclopaedias:] Because you can learn more from them. — Linus Pauling
One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at… — Gottfried Leibniz
Spellings are made by people. Dictionaries - eventually - reflect popular choices. — David Crystal
A library is many things. It's a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It's a place to go if you want… — Elwyn Brooks White

Who Wrote These Dictionaries Quotes

33 authors contributed a total of 35 Dictionaries Quotes, led by these top contributors: