“ 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. ”
- Ernest Hemingway- Copy
- 1.7K
“ Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words. ”
- Samuel Johnson- Copy
- 505
“ Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. ”
- Samuel Johnson- Copy
- 4K
“ At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction. ”
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning- Copy
- 1.6K
“ I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or literary diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive. ”
- James Agee- Copy
- 1.9K
“ Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few. ”
- Samuel Johnson- Copy
- 719
“ OLEAGINOUS, adj. Oily, smooth, sleek. Disraeli once described the manner of Bishop Wilberforce as "unctuous, oleaginous, saponaceous." And the good prelate was ever afterward known as Soapy Sam. For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin… ”
- Ambrose Bierce- Copy
- 1.8K
“ Men seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality. ”
- Kenneth Burke- Copy
- 2.5K
“ Yes, you can be a dreamer and a doer too, if you will remove one word from your vocabulary: impossible. ”
- Robert Schuller- Copy
- 2.2K
“ Yes and No are very short words to say, but we should think for some length of time before saying them. ”
- Unknown- Copy
- 2K
“ Prose, words in their best order. Poetry, the best words in the best order. ”
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge- Copy
- 2.9K
“ Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catch words. ”
- Robert Louis Stevenson- Copy
- 3.8K
“ A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise. ”
- John Henry Cardinal Newman- Copy
- 542
“ Yes and No are very short words to say, but we should think for some length of time before saying them. ”
- Unknown- Copy
- 1.8K
“ Pressure is a word that is misused in our vocabulary. When you start thinking of pressure, it's because you've started to think of failure. ”
- Tommy Lasorda- Copy
- 578
“ The only place you find success before work is in the dictionary. ”
- May V. Smith- Copy
- 1.2K
“ The word enough does not appear in instinct's dictionary. ”
- Timothy Ray Miller- Copy
- 3.4K
“ I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. ”
- Steven Wright- Copy
- 1.3K
“ In Spain, attempting to obtain a chicken salad sandwich, you wind up with a dish whose name, when you look it up in your Spanish-English dictionary, turns out to mean: Eel with big abcess. ”
- Dave Barry- Copy
- 3.4K
“ Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestions, the raw material of possible poems and histories. ”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson- Copy
- 2.4K
“ The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pre-test your product with consumers, and pre-test your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace. ”
- David Ogilvy- Copy
- 3.8K
“ If you're not ready to die for it, put the word "freedom" out of your vocabulary. ”
- Malcolm X- Copy
- 2.5K
“ Catching a yellow-jacket in your shirt at seventy miles per hour can double your vocabulary. ”
- Unknown- Copy
- 2.8K
“ Short words are the best and old words when short are best of all. ”
- Winston Churchill- Copy
- 1.4K
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