If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be "To abridge, expand, or... otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one's own writings in translation."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A tattered copy of Johnson's large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versifications whi...ch I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming occupation it must be to "make up" verses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When women can support themselves, have entry to all the trades and professions, with a house of their own over their heads and a ...bank account, they will own their bodies and be dictators in the social realm.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signifi...cation of words.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A very simple and useful device is to have a memorandum-book, so small that it can be easily carried in the pocket, to be used ins...tead of your mind to keep note of any errand or any appointment that you may have. The Standard Diary, less than four inches long and less than two and a half inches wide, is one of the best for this purpose. ...In fact, such diaries as these, in their wide range of information, would seem to be all that one needs in practical life, the only other book that at all approaches them in this respect being unquestionably Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now a Jew, in the dictionary, is one who is descended from the ancient tribes of Judea, or one who is regarded as descended from t...hat tribe. That's what it says in the dictionary; but you and I know what a Jew is--One Who Killed Our Lord.... And although there should be a statute of limitations for that crime, it seems that those who neither have the actions nor the gait of Christians, pagan or not, will bust us out, unrelenting dues, for another deuce.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the labyrinth of a difficult text, we find unmarked forks in the path, detours, blind alleys, loops that deliver us back to our... point of entry, and finally the monster who whispers an unintelligible truth in our ears.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »