Webster Quotes

The heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.

Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust

me: why is it upset? shouldn't it be downset? gideon: i will file a lawsuit against the dictionaries first thing tomorrow morning. we're going to tear merriam a new asshole and throw webster inside of it.

Half of the time I don't know what they're talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language.

I think that the most necessary quality for any person to have is imagination. It makes people able to put themselves in other people's places. It makes them kind and sympathetic and understanding.

Webster’s—the original high definition entertainment.

The world is full of happiness, and plenty to go round, if you are only willing to take the kind that comes your way. The whole secret is in being pliable.

Punk is musical freedom. It’s saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster’s terms, ‘nirvana’ means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that’s pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh - I really think that requires spirit. It's the kind of character that I am going to develop. I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skillfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh - also if I win.

Money is sad shit

I believe absolutely in my own free will and my own power to accomplish - and that is the belief that moves mountains.

Dear Daddy-Long-Legs, You never answered my question and it was very important. ARE YOU BALD?

It isn't the great big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones--I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant.

I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm going to know I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it. Most people don't live; they just race. They are trying to reach some goal far away on the horizon, and in the heat of the going they get so breathless and panting that they lose sight of the beautiful, tranquil country they are passing through; and then the first thing they know, they are old and worn out, and it doesn't make any difference whether they've reached the goal or not.

It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.

One would think he'd become a Master Jedi at it by now, but alas, "no" was not in his Webster.

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle. She died young.

What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?' 'History is the lies of the victors,' I replied, a little too quickly. 'Yes, I was rather afraid you'd say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also the self-delusions of the defeated. ... 'Finn?' '"History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation." (quoting Patrick Lagrange)

Words fail me sometimes. I have read most every word in the Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language, but I still have trouble making them come when I want them to. Right now I want a word that describes the feeling you get – a cold sick feeling deep down inside – when you know something is happening that will change you, and you don’t want it to, but you can’t stop it. And you know you will never be the same again.

There is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession

Please be thinking about me. I'm quite lonely and I want to be thought about

I don't need no Smith and Wesson, man, I got Merriam and Webster.

‎Be careful not to keep your eyes glued to detail. Stand far enough away to get a perspective of the whole.

Is it snowing where you are? All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns. It's late afternoon - the sun is just setting (a cold yellow colour) behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.

Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun.

In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character.

The proper function of a government is to make it easy for the people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.

The sad fact is that I love Dickens and Donne and Keats and Eliot and Forster and Conrad and Fitzgerald and Kafka and Wilde and Orwell and Waugh and Marvell and Greene and Sterne and Shakespeare and Webster and Swift and Yeats and Joyce and Hardy, really, really love them. It’s just that they don’t love me back.

So the crow spirals down through a collapsed dream and the only sound it makes in like a concave scream.

If all my possessions were taken from me with one exception, I would choose to keep the power of communication, for by it I would soon regain all the rest

She was by nature a sunny soul

Extroverts want us to have fun, because they assume we want what they want. And sometimes we do. But “fun” itself is a “bright” word, the kind of word that comes with flashing lights and an exclamation point! One of Merriam-Webster’s definitions of “fun” is “violent or excited activity or argument.” The very word makes me want to sit in a dimly lit room with lots of pillows—by myself.

Who's with her?" Roarke asked, though he already knew. It was just like her. "With her? Oh, ah, hmmm. Webster." Silence fell, a clatter of broken bricks. Peabody folded her hands in her pockets and prepared for the explosion to follow. "I see." When Roarke simply turned back to the screen and continued, she didn't know whether to be relieved or scared to death.

The more I study men, the more I realize that they are nothing in the world but boys grown too big to be spankable.

It isn't the big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones.

It isn't the big troubles in life that require character. Anybody can rise to a crisis and face a crushing tragedy with courage, but to meet the petty hazards of the day with a laugh—I really think that requires spirit!

I'll be contacting Webster tomorrow. My suggestion will be absofuckingmazing.

Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.

There is nothing so powerful as truth - and often nothing so strange.

God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it.

Whether we fall by ambition, blood or lust Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust

Thank heaven I don't inherit God from anybody! I am free to make mine up as I wish Him. He's kind and sympathetic and imaginative and forgiving and understanding - and He has a sense of humor.

Oh, I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines. That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness.

This is your heart. Keep it locked until the chap turns up who has the key.

If we abide by the principles taught in the Bible, our country will go on prospering and to prosper; but if we and our posterity neglect its instructions and authority, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity.

I have a terrible wanderthirst; the very sight of a map makes me want to put on my hat and take an umbrella and start. I shall see before I die the palms and temples of the South.

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions

I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh—also if I win.

There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters

He and I always think the same things are funny, and that is such a lot; it's dreadful when two people's senses of humor are antagonistic. I don't believe there's any bridging that gulf! And he is--Oh, well! He is just himself, and I miss him, and miss him, and miss him. The whole world seems empty and aching. I hate the moonlight because it's beautiful and he isn't here to see it with me. But maybe you've loved somebody, too, and you know? If you have, I don't need to explain; if you haven't, I can't explain.

A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.

Getting an education is an awfully wearing process!

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.

You tell Roarke you were tagging me for this? Or is he going to get riled up so I have to kick his ass again?" "Oh, is that what you were doing when you had to be carried out of the room unconscious?" "I like to remember it that I was just getting my second wind.

It seems to me that a man who can think straight along for forty-seven years without changing a single idea ought to be kept in a cabinet as a curiosity.

When sorrow comes, they come not single spies, but in battalions. I've allies in heaven, Jack, i've commrades in hell...say hello for me...

Sometimes an angel is found in the dark.

There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors. [This quote illustrates the reformed spelling advocated by Webster.]

Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.

Nobody can be strong all of the time. That’s why it’s in our human nature to seek another soul out there. Someone to be strong some of the time for us. Someone to share our burdens with,

He has gone and we are missing him ! When you get accustomed to people or places or ways of living, and then have them snatched away, it does leave an empty, gnawing sort of sensation.

I ate breakfast in the kitchen by candle-light, and then drove the five miles to the station through the most glorious October colouring. The sun came up on the way, and the swamp maples and dogwood glowed crimson and orange and the stone walls and cornfields sparkled with hoar frost; the air was keen and clear and full of promise. I knew something was going to happen.

Let us never forget that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labor of man. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization.

Good manners are not merely snobbish ornaments, as Mrs. Lippett's regime appeared to believe. They mean self-discipline and thought for others, and my children have got to learn them.

What do you mean I have a predetermined death?” – Nick “Did I stutter?” – Death “No.” – Nick “Do I look like Webster’s?” – Death “No.” – Nick “Then you should understand what I said, since I didn’t speak in code. Every mortal creature is born with an expiration date. Some immortals, too. Set by the big clockmaker. But excessive stupidity and moronic tendencies can shorten it. Pissing me off is one really good way to cut yours down to three seconds from now.” – Death

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

إن معظم الناس لا يعيشون، إنهم يتسابقون و يجرون، إنهم يحاولون الوصول إلى هدف يلوح بعيدا فى الأفق، ومن خلال حرارة الجرى ولهاث الأنفاس يفقدون كل قدرة على الرؤية الصحيحة للأرض الجميلة الهادئة التى يمرقون خلالها؛ ثم بعد ذلك فإن أول شىء يدركونه ويحسون به فعلا هو أنهم بلغوا أرذل العمر و أن التعب قد أضناهم ولا يهم بعد ذلك إذا كانوا قد بلغوا أهدافهم أم لا. إننى قررت أن أجلس و أتمهل فى الطريق و أنهمك فى جمع وتكويم نتف من المتع الصغيرة

Few things build a person up like affirmation. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, Third College Edition (Simon and Schuster, 1991), the word affirm comes from ad firmare, which means “to make firm.” So when you affirm people, you make firm within them the things you see about them. Do that often enough, and the belief that solidifies within them will become stronger than the doubts they have about themselves.

I account this world a tedious theater, For I do play a part in 't 'gainst my will.

Ain't that a sight? With all the things we know and learn, we still ain't touched the big mysteries -- where we come from, where we go next, why we even her. And when something truly miraculous happens, we run and hide in our caves. We deny.

Ambition, madam, is a great man's madness.

We walk among them sometimes, the ones who have left us. They are filled with something that none of us knows yet. It is a mystery.

Watcha doin? If you're like me, you're doin nothin, but you're doin it so well that everybody thinks you're doin somethin.

Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, like diamonds we are cut with our own dust.

What a strange creature is a laughing fool, As if a man were created to no use But only to show his teeth.

The people's government, made for the people, made by the people and answerable to the people. January 1830

إنني أنمو يومياً يا والدي وسوف أصبح شخصية جميلة، هذه الشخصية ربما تختفي وتضعف عندما تهب بعض الأعاصير وتثور بعض الدوامات، لكنها ستتألق وتشع نوراً عندما تشرق الشمس

Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.

... in spite of being happier than I ever dreamed I could be, I'm also soberer. The fear that something may happen to you rests like a shadow on my heart. Always before I could be frivolous and carefree and unconcerned, because I had nothing precious to lose. But now -- I shall have a Great Big Worry all the rest of my life. Whenever you are away from me I shall be thinking of all the automobiles that can run over you, or the signboards that can fall on your head or the dreadful, squirmy germs that you may be swallowing.

Don't you think it would be interesting if you could read the story of your life - written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient author?

If this book should ever roam, Box its ears and send it home.

وهكذا هو الحال مع كل الناس،فأنا لا أتفق مع النظرية القائلة بأن المصائب والبلايا وخيبة الأمل المتكررة هى التى تخلق الشخصية القوية، إنهم السعداء فقط هم اللذين ينصخون بالحب والحنان..

A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.

The feeling often comes over me that I am not at all remarkable; it is fun to plan a career, but in all probability I shan't turn out a bit different from any other ordinary person.

Mars knew that love wasn't all red-paper valentines and candy hearts. Love wasn't always joy. Love could be hot-blooded pain down to the bone. Sometimes love was despair. And sometimes love was wrong.

اعتقد أن ما يهم الإنسان ليست الأفراح الكبرى لكن المسرات و المتع الصغيرة التى تصنع الشىء الكثير، لقد اكتشفت السر الحقيقى للسعادة يا والدى؛ وهو أن تعيش فى الآن فقط و تهتم باللحظة الحاضرة. لا تندم على الماضى أو تعمل حسابا للمستقبل، لكن عليك أن تحصل على أكثر ما تستطيع من هذه اللحظة الحاضرة التى تعيش فيها

I've discovered the true secret of happiness, Daddy, and that is to live in the now. Not to be for ever regretting the past, or anticipating the future; but to get the most that you can out of this very instant...I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm going to know I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it.

If religious books are not widely circulated among the masses in this country, I do not know what is going to become of us as a nation. If truth be not diffused, then error will be. If God and His Word are not known and received, the devil and his works will gain the ascendency. If the evangelical volume does not reach every hamlet, the pages of a corrupt and licentious literature will. If the power of the gospel is not felt throughout the length and breadth of this land, anarchy and misrule, degradation and misery, corruption and darkness will reign without mitigation or end.

إن المتاعب الكبرى التي نواجهنا في الحياة هي التي تحتاج إلى الأخلاق القويمة، وكل إنسان في إمكانه أن يقابل أية أزمة أو مصيبة بشجاعة، ولكن قل لي بالله عليك، كيف يواجه المرء المضايقات اليومية الصغيرة بروح مرحة منطلقة؟ أعتقد أن هذا يلزمه عزيمة من حديد

What do you think is my favourite book? Just now, I mean; I change every three days. "Wuthering Heights." Emily Bronte was quite young when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard. She had never known any men in her life; how could she imagine a man like Heathcliff? I couldn't do it, and I'm quite young and never outside the John Grier Asylum - I've had every chance in the world. Sometimes a dreadful fear comes over me that I'm not a genius. Will you be awfully disappointed, Daddy, if I don't turn out to be a great author?

I regard it (the Constitution) as the work of the purest patriots and wisest statesman that ever existed, aided by the smiles of a benign Providence; it almost appears a "Divine interposition in our behalf... the hand that destroys our Constitution rends our Union asunder forever.

One can't help thinking, Daddy, what a colourless life a man is forced to lead, when one reflects that chiffon and Venetian point and hand embroidery and Irish crochet are to him mere empty words. Whereas a woman- whether she is interested in babies or microbes or husbands or poetry or servants or parallelograms or gardens or Plato or bridge- is fundamentally and always interested in clothes.

Get over it. It’s all in your head. I get so fucking tired of that line. Of course it’s in my goddamned head. If I knew how to get it out, I’d have already found a way to crack open my skull and scoop the shit out. Smear it all over the fucking walls and light it on fire. Watch it burn to the shitty-ass ground I have to walk on every single day.

Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.

I love you at your best, and I love you at your worst. I love every single part of you. I always have and always will. I even love the parts that I hate about you. How fucking weird is that? And I'll continue to love you in every capacity, no matter how strange that makes me. I'll fill in the missing voids of your heart with parts of mine. Together we'll be whole.

I went to bed last night utterly dejected; I thought I was never going to amount to anything, and that you had thrown away your money for nothing. But what do you think? I woke up this morning with a beautiful new plot in my head, and I've been going about all day planning my characters, just as happy as I could be. No one can ever accuse me of being a pessimist! If I had a husband and twelve children swallowed by an earthquake one day, I'd bob up smilingly the next morning and commence to look for another set. ~Jershua Abbott

I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an "engaged" on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. One book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and "Vanity Fair" and Kipling's "Plain Tales" and - don't laugh - "Little Women." I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on "Little Women." I haven't told anybody though (that would stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she is talking about!

This is an extra letter in the middle of the month because I'm rather lonely tonight. It's awfully stormy; the snow is beating against my tower. All the lights are out on the campus, but I drank black coffee and I can't go to sleep. I had a supper party this evening consisting of Sallie and Julia and Leonora Fenton - and sardines and toasted muffins and salad and fudge and coffee. Julia said she'd had a good time, but Sallie stayed to help wash the dishes.

Don't you think it would be interesting if you could read the story of your life- written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient author? And suppose you could only read it on this condition: that you would never forget it, but would have to go through life knowing ahead of time exactly how everything you did would turn out, and forseeing to the exact hour the time you would die. How many people do you suppose you have the courage to read it then? Or how many could suppress their curiosity sufficiently to escape from reading it, even at the price of having to live without hope, without surprise? Life is monotonous enough at best; you have to eat and sleep about so often. But imagine how deadly monotonous it would be if nothing unexpected could happen between meals?

{Yogananda on the death of his dear friend, the eminent 20th century scientist, Luther Burbank} His heart was fathomlessly deep, long acquainted with humility, patience, sacrifice. His little home amid the roses was austerely simple; he knew the worthlessness of luxury, the joy of few possessions. The modesty with which he wore his scientific fame repeatedly reminded me of the trees that bend low with the burden of ripening fruits; it is the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast. I was in New York when, in 1926, my dear friend passed away. In tears I thought, 'Oh, I would gladly walk all the way from here to Santa Rosa for one more glimpse of him!' Locking myself away from secretaries and visitors, I spent the next twenty-four hours in seclusion... His name has now passed into the heritage of common speech. Listing 'burbank' as a transitive verb, Webster's New International Dictionary defines it: 'To cross or graft (a plant). Hence, figuratively, to improve (anything, as a process or institution) by selecting good features and rejecting bad, or by adding good features.' 'Beloved Burbank,' I cried after reading the definition, 'your very name is now a synonym for goodness!