Defining Words Quotes & Sayings

secularism should be understood as the view that: government should not involve itself with religious matters; religious doctrine should play no role in shaping public policy or in the discourse about public policy; and religious institutions and beliefs should not enjoy a privileged position within society. — Ronald A. Lindsay

Everyone turns toward someone. Look for one scarred by the King's polo stick. — Rumi

Fear is only as deep as the mind allows. — Jonathan Mayberry

That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific-chair, eye, stone- but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out. — Janet Fitch

...I've been ripped off, lied to, slandered, gossiped about slapped, falsely accused, and had my truths not believed. I've had my heart broken, had my pride stomped on, witnessed unforgivable acts, and heard words that hurt so much I withed that they would not replay in my head, but they did. In all these moments--some tear-soaked, some life-defining, but all character-building moments--I have felt vulnerable.
And I believe these feelings of vulnerability--when a person feels scared and alone and overwhelmed and pissed off, wen the sting of unfairness bites deep--while miserable to live through, are the basis for writing compelling fiction. — Jessica Page Morrell

The early dictionaries in English were frequently created by a single author, but they were small works, and not what we think of today as dictionaries. Robert Cawdrey's A Table Alphabeticall, published in 1604, is generally regarded as the first English dictionary. It was an impressive feat in many respects, but it contained fewer than 2,500 entries, the defining of which would not be a lifetime's work. This and the other dictionaries of the seventeenth century were mostly attempts to catalog and define "difficult words"; little or no attention was given to the nuts and bolts of the language or to such concerns as etymology and pronunciation. For — Ammon Shea

I was searching for a vocabulary with which to make sense of death, to find a way to begin defining myself and inching forward again. The privilege of direct experience had led me away from literary and academic work, yet now I felt that to understand my own experiences, I would have to translate them back into language. Hemingway described his process in similar terms: acquiring rich experiences, then retreating to cogitate and write about them. I needed words to go forward. — Paul Kalanithi

All of a sudden his books, which had hitherto been merely a fond decoration and a means of letting his mind free itself from the grim routines of Broadmoor life, had become his most precious possession. For the time being at least he could set aside his imaginings about the harm that people were trying to inflict on him and his person: It was instead his hundreds of books that now needed to be kept safe, and away from the predators with whom he believed the asylum to be infested. His books, and his work on the words he found in them, were about to become the defining feature of his newly chosen life. — Simon Winchester

Remember, while words can be powerful, eloquent, and lasting, it is our committed action that will ultimately serve as the defining factor of our relationships. — Steve Maraboli

Big Idea
Your days are your life in miniature. As you live your hours, so you create your years. As you live your days, so you craft your life. What you do today is actually creating your future. The words you speak, the thoughts you think, the food you eat and the actions you take are defining your destiny - shaping who you are becoming and what your life will stand for. Small choices lead to giant consequences over time. There's no such thing as an unimportant day. — Robin S. Sharma

It was language I loved, not meaning. I liked poetry better when I wasn't sure what it meant. Eliot has said that the meaning of the poem is provided to keep the mind busy while the poem gets on with its work
like the bone thrown to the dog by the robber so he can get on with his work ... Is beauty a reminder of something we once knew, with poetry one of its vehicles? Does it give us a brief vision of that 'rarely glimpsed bright face behind/ the apparency of things'? Here, I suppose, we ought to try the impossible task of defining poetry. No one definition will do. But I must admit to a liking for the words of Thomas Fuller, who said: 'Poetry is a dangerous honey. I advise thee only to taste it with the Tip of thy finger and not to live upon it. If thou do'st, it will disorder thy Head and give thee dangerous Vertigos. — P.K. Page

I have some very personal feelings about politics, but I don't get into it because I do comedy already. — Jerry Lewis

the problem that I've found with
most poets that I have known is that
they've never had an 8 hour job
and there is nothing
that will put a person
more in touch
with the realities
than
an 8 hour job.

they have been protected
against the actualities
from the
beginning
and they
understand nothing
but the ends of their
fingernails
and
their delicate
hairlines
and
their lymph
nodes.
their words are
unlived, unfurnished, un-
true, and worse - so
fashionably
dull.

poet (?): that word
needs re-defining. — Charles Bukowski

Mads has a terrifying subtlety and as the episodes go on, you start seeing the way a person can command other people by doing practically nothing and terrifying the sh*t out of you. He is the most astonishingly subtle performer with the most incredibly keen sense of what his face can do and how his words can form. He has a mission. Nothing is by chance. I truly believe as long as we have success in seasons that Mads will become the defining face of Hannibal Lecter. — David Slade

The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sponsors and networks will really go all out and simply evaluate people on the basis of talent. — Norman Granz

People really don't want handouts, that they want to make their own decisions. — Jacqueline Novogratz

In marketing terms, a commodity is an undifferentiated product that is just like its competitors. It isn't usually very innovative, and offers a similar set of features and price point compared to competitive products. In other words, its defining characteristic is its "sameness" compared to other similar products. When a product becomes a commodity, the price that it commands in the marketplace tends to erode. People aren't willing to pay extra for your product. They consider it and those of your competitors to be interchangeable, so no one company has an edge in sales. — Chuck Frey

The West, for many centuries, has been dominated by a highly rationalistic mindset that presumes to express and explain the nature of God through words. The East has only recently begun to express its understanding of God in those ways. For the most part, Eastern Christianity has always recognized that it can only say so much about God in finite, human ways before it must go silent before the mystery of the Infinite and Unspeakable. Instead of defining ultimate reality in theological concepts, the East has relied upon its artists, musicians, and poets to proclaim what can only be understood in the heart. — Peter Pearson

most obvious application of functions is defining new vocabulary. Creating new words in regular, human-language prose is usually bad style. But in programming, it is indispensable. — Marijn Haverbeke

It's good that it hurts. Pain is the signal that you're confused, that you're in a lie. — Byron Katie

The essential and defining characteristic of childhood is not the effortless merging of dream and reality, but only alienation. There are no words for childhood's dark turns and exhalations. A wise child recognizes it and submits to the necessary consequences. A child who counts the cost is a child no longer. — Stephen King

When Isaac Newton embarked on his great program, he encountered a fundamental lack of definition where it was most needed. He began with a semantic sleight of hand: "I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all," he wrote deceptively. Defining these words was his very purpose. There were no agreed standards for weights and measures. Weight and measure were themselves vague terms. Latin seemed more reliable than English, precisely because it was less worn by everyday use, but the Romans had not possessed the necessary words either. — James Gleick

My journey began with a single pencil. While traveling through India in 2006, I asked a boy begging on the streets, 'If you could have anything in the world, what would you want?' and he answered me with two words: 'A pencil.' Luckily, I had one in my pocket, and in the second it took me to give it to him, a defining dream was born. — Adam Braun

Certain mystes aver that the real world has been constructed by the human mind, since our ways are governed by the artificial categories into which we place essentially undifferentiated things, things weaker than our words for them.
[ ... ]
We believe we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. — Gene Wolfe

Robinson was important to all blacks. To make it into the majors and to take all the name calling, he had to be something special. He had to take all this for years, not just for Jackie Robinson, but for the nation. — Willie Mays

Words matter, especially words defining complicated political arrangements, because they shape perceptions of the events of the past, attitudes toward policies being carried out in the present, and expectations about desirable directions for the future. — Michael Mandelbaum

[The] defining characteristics of good prose [are]: a preference for short sentences diversified by an occasionally very long one; a tone that is relaxed and almost colloquial; a large vocabulary that enjoys exploiting the different etymological and social levels of words; and an insistence on verbal and logical precision. — F.W. Bateson

One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms. — Gottfried Leibniz

I can tell how I'm doing, and I can tell if the crowd is particularly dead. — Robyn Hitchcock