Definitions Quotes

“Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.”
― Stephen King, Bag of Bones

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
― Mark Twain

“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
― H.G. Wells, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman

“Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“Tears are words the heart can't express”
― Gerard Way

“Wit is educated insolence.”
― Aristotle

“A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”
― H.L. Mencken

“contiguous, adj.

I felt silly for even mentioning it, but once I did, I knew I had to explain.
"When I was a kid, "I had this puzzle with all fifty states on it--you know, the kind where you have to fit them all together. And one day I got it in my head that California and Nevada were in love. I told my mom, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I ran and got those two pieces and showed it to her--California and Nevada, completely in love. So a lot of the time when we're like this"--my ankles against the backs of your ankles, my knees fitting into the backs of your knees, my thighs on the backs of your legs, my stomach against your back, my chin folding into your neck--"I can't help but think about California and Nevada, and how we're a lot like them. If someone were drawing us from above as a map. that's what we'd look like; that's how we are."
For a moment, you were quiet. And then you nestled in and whispered.
"Contiguous."
And I knew you understood.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“Liquor is the chloroform which enables the poor man to endure the painful operation of living.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

“An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do.”
― Dylan Thomas

“Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.”
― Ronald Reagan

“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.”
― Socrates

“Consensus: “The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus?”
― Margaret Thatcher

“Avant-garde is French for bullshit”
― John Lennon

“Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.”
― H.L. Mencken

“Definitions and meanings change all the time. Truth and reality are very volatile, indefinite, multi layered and sometimes very paradoxical. That’s why it is very fiddly to make a set definition for the phenomena of our daily life. ( " Did not expect it would ever happen, there" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

“Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.”
― Ambrose Bierce

“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”
― Ronald Reagan

“A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.”
― Gore Vidal

“Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.”
― Ambrose Bierce , The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.”
― John Dewey, How We Think

“All concepts in which an entire process is semiotically concentrated elude definition; only that which has no history is definable.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals