Dictionary Quotes

“That does it," said Jace. "I'm going to get you a dictionary for Christmas this year."
"Why?" Isabelle said.
"So you can look up 'fun.' I'm not sure you know what it means.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

“If you look up "charming" in the dictionary, you'll see that it not only has references to strong attraction, but to spells and magic. Then again, what are liars if not great magicians?”
― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

“breathtaking, adj.

Those mornings when we kiss and surrender for an hour before we say a single word.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”
― Italo Calvino

“The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of
the word "Infinite".
Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some.
Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a
totally stunning size, "wow, that's big", time. Infinity is just so
big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy.
Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly
huge is the sort of concept we're trying to get across here.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I don't understand your book. Isn't every book a book of words?”
― Kristin Cashore, Bitterblue

“Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use.

The mere presence in the dictionary of a word like 'living' does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

“Empty teacups gathered around her and dictionary pages fell at her feet.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“How come "burbled" gets to be in the Oxford English Dictionary but "tulgy" doesn't? Hm?”
― Mike Tucker, Doctor Who: The Nightmare of Black Island

“Mistake is a single page in a part of Life ....
but Relation is a book of dictionary -----
So don't lose a full Book for a single page.”
― Rubeccapalm Rose

“As I make my way through, I feel okayness reaching through me.
The funny thing is that okayness is not a real word. It's not in the dictionary.
But it's in me.”
― Markus Zusak, Getting the Girl

“Agatha Christie n. A silent, putrid fart committed by someone in this very room, and only one person knows whodunnit.”
― VIZ, Roger's Profanisaurus: The Magna Farta.

“Why don’t you purchase an Italian dictionary? I will assume the expense.”
“I have one,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s very good. Half the words are missing.”
“Half?”
“Well, some,” she amended. “But truly, that’s not the problem.”
He blinked, waiting for her to continue.
She did. Of course. “I don’t think Italian is the author’s native tongue,” she said.
“The author of the dictionary?” he queried.
“Yes. It’s not terribly idiomatic.”
― Julia Quinn, It's in His Kiss

“And so, when I began to read the proffered pages, I at one moment lost the train of thought in the text and drowned it in my own feelings. In these seconds of absence and self-oblivion, centuries passed with every read but uncomprehended and unabsorbed line, and when, after a few moments, I came to and re-established contact with the text, I knew that the reader who returns from the open seas of his feelings is no longer the same reader who embarked on that sea only a short while ago.”
― Milorad Pavić, Dictionary of the Khazars

“In the absence of a formally agreed, worldwide dictionary definition of 'Quotography' (in 2016), here are my two cents worth: 'Quotography is the art of pairing unique quotations with complementary images in order to express thought-provoking ideas, challenging concepts, profound sentiments'.”
― Alex Morritt, Lines & Lenses

“If I'm a guy who doesn't seem so merry,
It's just because I'm so misunderstood.
When I was young I ate a dictionary,
And that did not do me a bit of good.
For I've absorbed so many words and phrases—
They drive me dizzy when I want to speak.
I start explaining but each person gazes
As if I spoke in Latin or in Greek.”
― Ira Gershwin, The Complete Lyrics of Ira Gershwin

“Telephone books are, like dictionaries, already out of date the moment they are printed....”
― Ammon Shea, The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads

“corgi 1. n. A high class hound, such as those that accompany the Queen. 2. n. A high class hound, such as the one that accompanies Prince Charles.”
― VIZ, Roger's Profanisaurus: The Magna Farta.

“There's no such thing as an unabridged dictionary.”
― Jack Lynch, The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of "Proper" English, from Shakespeare to South Park

“Tudo parecia organizado da melhor forma possível, como se de fato o mundo constasse somente de palavras, como se assim o próprio horror fosse trazido para dimensões seguras, como se para cada aspecto de uma coisa houvesse um reverso, para cada mal um bem, para cada dissabor um prazer, para cada infelicidade uma felicidade e para cada mentira um quinhão de verdade.”
― W.G. Sebald, Vertigo

“When I’m tired, I can be a real Wednesday, if you know what I mean. If you don’t know what I mean, I’m selling a dictionary for ONLY $19.95. It's got one word in it, quack, but that one word is listed over and over, because The Ducks taught me their language.”
― Jarod Kintz, Music is fluid, and my saxophone overflows when my ducks slosh in the sounds I make in elevators.

“I told myself it was curiosity spurring me on. I didn't realize that a dictionary might be like reading a map or looking in a mirror.

butch (v. transitive), to slaughter (an animal), to kill for market. Also: to cut up, to hack
dyke (n.), senses relating to a ditch or hollowed-out section
gay (v. intransitive), to be merry, cheerful, or light-hearted. Obsolete
lesbian rule (n.), a flexible (usually lead) ruler which can be bent to fit what is being measured...
queer (adj.), strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric. Also: of questionable character, suspicious, dubious...

Even at school I remember wondering about closets, whether there was a subtle difference between someone being in a closet and a skeleton being in a closet.”
― Eley Williams, The Liar's Dictionary

“Even the deepest possible description is superficial.”
― @Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Maintain consistency, achieve success...even with expletives.”
― Erika M. Weinert

“As a noun, shit can pretty much be anything. It's one of the most versatile words in this dicktionary.

For instance, 'While I was shitting, my roommate was yelling some shit from the other room about how I always leave my work shit on the table.”
― Erika M. Weinert, Cursing with Style: A Dicktionary of Expletives

“And of course I carry a dictionary, the best available. Sometimes when I have to look up a word, I waste a great deal of time because I start to read the dictionary as if it were a novel that makes me eager to see what comes next. The words of English have been endlessly fascinating for me and I would judge that I have mastered not more than a sixth of them. If the total runs to something like 550,000, that would be 92,000, and that figure might be far too high. But my word chase goes on and the interest never flags.”
—James A. Michener, “The World Is My Home”, Chapter VII “Ideas”, page 232”
― James A. Michener, The World Is My Home

“No writer ever knows enough words but he doesn’t have to try to use all that he does know. Tests would show that I had an enormous vocabulary and through the years it must have grown, but I never had a desire to display it in the way that John Updike or William Buckley or William Safire do to such lovely and often surprising effect. They use words with such spectacular results; I try, not always successfully, to follow the pattern of Ernest Hemingway who achieved a striking style with short familiar words. I want to avoid calling attention to mine, judging them to be most effective as ancillaries to a sentence with a strong syntax.
My approach has been more like that of Somerset Maugham, who late in life confessed that when he first thought of becoming a writer he started a small notebook in which he jotted down words that seemed unusually beautiful or exotic, such as chalcedony, for as a novice he believed that good writing consisted of liberally sprinkling his text with such words. But years later, when he was a successful writer, he chanced to review his list and found that he had never used even one of his beautiful collection. Good writing, for most of us, consists of trying to use ordinary words to achieve extraordinary results.
I struggle to find the right word and keep always at hand the largest dictionary my workspace can hold, and I do believe I consult it at least six or seven times each working day, for English is a language that can never be mastered.* [*Even though I have studied English for decades I am constantly surprised to find new definitions I have not known: ‘panoply’ meaning ‘a full set of armor’, ‘calendar’ meaning ‘a printed index to a jumbled group of related manuscripts or papers’.
—Chapter IX “Intellectual Equipment”, page 306”
― James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir

“Provare a=Cercare di/ try to=seek to
A Dictionary shall always remain one of my favorite books, because it allows me to read other books. This book will always be bigger than I am.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, In Other Words

“Chapter 3: The madness of war (page 47)

(A third half-brother, Thomas T. Minor, died in peculiar circumstances many years later. He moved to the American West, first as doctor to the Winnebago tribe in Nebraska, then to the newly acquired Alaskan Territory to collect specimens of Artic habitations, and finally on to Port Townsend and Seattle, where he was elected mayor. In 1889, still holding the post, he took off on a canoe expedition to Whidbey Island with a friend, G. Morris Haller. Neither man ever returned. Neither boats nor bodies were ever found. A Minor street and a Thomas T. Minor School remain, as well as a reputation in Seattle that equates the name of Minor with some degree of glamour, pioneering, and mystery.)”
― Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary