Noun Quotes & Sayings

Crash, from the Russian krashenina Noun: a rough fabric sometimes used to strengthen the spine of a book — Blue Balliett

Think Tank, noun: The shower. — Craig Bruce

Evan chuckled and shook his head. "I should have known it would be another owl. What is it with you and owls? I'm surrounded by the bloody things. There's more of them than the spider plants."
"Don't listen to him," Rai said, standing and swivelling around to take in all his menagerie. Owlery? I made a mental note to Google the collective noun for owls later. "You're all precious snowflakes, my lovelies. — Josephine Myles

Critical feedback shared in good faith is inherently a constructive dialogue. A "critique," a term that is both a noun and a verb, represents the systematical application of critical thought, a disciplined method of analysis, expressing of opinions, and rendering judgments. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Strange, the Hebrew noun which means "I am", The English always use to govern damn. — George Gordon Byron

Life is a verb, not a noun. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman

God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper. — R. Buckminster Fuller

It's weird the way "finger puppet" sounds okay as a noun ... ladies. — Demetri Martin

In reality, love is fluid; it's a verb, not a noun. — Sharon Salzberg

Do not keep company with people who speak of careers. Not only are such people uninteresting in themselves; they also have no interest in anything interesting ... Keep company with people who are interested in the world outside themselves. The one who never asks you what you are working on; who never inquires as to the success of your latest project; who never uses the word career as a noun
he is your friend. — Roger Rosenblatt

Bus factor (noun): the number of people that need to get hit by a bus before your project is completely doomed. — Brian W. Fitzpatrick

One of the glories of English simplicity is the possibility of using the same word as noun and verb. — Edward Sapir

Good is a noun rather than an adjective. — Robert M. Pirsig

Maybe after I saved everyone we could all take a ride on the fucking Ferris wheel ... Fuck was now added to my vocabulary. It was an outstanding word that could basically mean just about anything. It could be used as a noun, verb and adverb. It rolled off the tongue with ease and even if you spoke a foreign language it was difficult not to understand fuck off or off you fuck or fuck you. — Robyn Peterman

The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

- Anne Hathaway — Carol Ann Duffy

And I have to say, books haven't helped much with all this. Because whenever you read anything about love, whenever anyone tries to define it, there's always a state or an abstract noun, and I try to think of it like that. But actually, love is ... Well, it's just you. And when you go, it's gone. Nothing abstract about it. — Nick Hornby

We talk about cancer as a noun, as if it's a one time event: 'I've got cancer.' — David Agus

Love requires openness. The point is to be changed by, and to witness change in, one another. Slowly, this back-and-forth transforms the shared reality we call the world. Love is less noun than verb: not a thing to get, but a process to set in motion. — Moira Weigel

If you can remember all the accessories that go with your best outfit, the contents of your purse, the starting lineup of the New York Yankees or the Houston Oilers, or what label "Hang On Sloopy" by The McCoys was on, you are capable of remembering the differences between a gerund (verb form used as a noun) and a participle (verb form used as an adjective). — Stephen King

CRUSHER: [NOUN] SOMEONE WHO SURFS HARD, AS IF THEY HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE AND NO FEAR INSIDE — Alessandra Torre

Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? ... We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves. — Diane Ackerman

Every romantic knows that love was never a noun; it is a verb. — Shannon L. Alder

Any adjective you put before the noun 'writer' is going to be limiting in some way. Whether it's feminist writer, Jewish writer, Russian writer, or whatever. — Alice McDermott

No, Princes Charming," Duncan cheerfully corrected. "'Prince' is the noun; that's what gets pluralized. 'Charming' is an adjective; you can't add an S to it like that. — Christopher Healy

Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. — Mark Forsyth

Parenting isn't a noun but a verb
an ongoing process instead of an accomplishment. And that no matter how many years you put into the job, the learning curve is, well, fairly flat. — Jodi Picoult

Hypocrisy
/hi pakrise/ noun
1. The moment you tell someone it is not important to be right, in order to look right to everyone else. — Shannon L. Alder

I think the best way to put it is that newspictures are the noun and the verb; our kind of photography is the adjective and adverb. The newspicture is a single frame; ours, a subject viewed in series. The newspicture is dramatic, all subject and action. Ours shows what's back of the action. — Roy Stryker

Economy: As an adjective, cheap; As a noun, that which compels us to render ourselves as such. — CrimethInc.

Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now. — Fred Rogers

When we were little kids, 'friend' wasn't a verb. You didn't 'friend' someone. You had friends. It was only a noun. It didn't multitask. It was a simpler time, Hen. — Daniel Ehrenhaft

Don't say you're a writer if you're not writing. Even if you're writing, don't call yourself a writer. Say instead, 'I write.' It's the verb that's important, not the noun. — Patti Digh

Since we are on the topic of ravens, a collective noun for ravens is an unkindness. This is somewhat puzzling to Thought and Memory. — Diane Setterfield

What happened when the Verb asked the noun to conjugate? She said "no-no!", forgot the "o" and decided to become a nun! — Ana Claudia Antunes

I am a verb, not a noun. — Tirza Schaefer

Game, noun: Any unserious occupation designed for the relaxation of busy people and the distraction of idle ones. It's used to take people to whom we have nothing to say off our hands, and sometimes even ourselves. — Etienne Bonnot De Condillac

The beauty of merism is that it's absolutely unnecessary. It's words for words' sake: a gushing torrent of invention filled with noun and noun and signifying nothing. Why a rhetorical figure that gabs on and on for no good reason should be central to the rite of marriage is beyond me. — Mark Forsyth

In the history of the concept of number has been adjective (three cows, three monads) and noun (three, pure and simple), and now ... number seems to be more like a verb (to triple). — Barry Mazur

But suppose we take the noun 'truth': here is a case where the disagreements between different theorists have largely turned on whether they interpreted this as a name of a substance, of a quality, or of a relation. — J.L. Austin

Mindgasm (noun) - An exhilarating neurostorm of intense intellectual pleasure. Fully revelatory understanding of a certain topic. Involuntary contractions of brain muscles usually accompanied by the overwhelming sensation of truth proximity. Visionarism. State of awe. — Jason Silva

Hyacinth," Lady Bridgerton said in a vaguely disapproving voice, "do try to speak in complete sentences."
Hyacinth looked at her mother with a surprised expression. "Biscuits. Are. Good." She cocked her head to the side. "Noun. Verb. Adjective."
"Hyacinth."
"Noun. Verb. Adjective." Colin said, wiping a crumb from his grinning face. "Sentence. Is. Correct. — Julia Quinn

MOM - noun - One who sacrifices her body, sleep, social life, spending money, eating hot meals, peeing alone, patience, memory, energy and sanity for LOVE! — Tanya Masse

Confidence; Noun. A condition where one knows what he is good at no matter how much you try to convince him otherwise. — Dan Pearce

People take even greater umbrage when they hear themselves labeled with a common noun. The reason is that a noun predicate appears to pigeonhole the with a stereotype of a category rather than referring to them as an individual who happens to possess a trait. — Steven Pinker

The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

The phrase 'Founding Fathers' is a proper noun. It refers to a specific group: the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There were other important players not in attendance, but these fifty-five made up the core. Among the delegates were twenty-eight Episcopalians, eight Presbyterians, seven Congregationalists, two Lutherans, two Dutch Reformed, two Methodists, two Roman Catholics, one unknown, and only three deists- Williamson, Wilson, and Franklin. This took place at a time when church membership usually entailed "sworn adherence to strict doctrinal creeds." This tally proves that 51 of 55 -a full 93 percent- of the members of the Constitutional Convention, the most influential group of men shaping the political underpinnings of our nation were Christians, not deists. — Gregory Koukl

Anything being perceived as being superior takes the noun. And everything that isn't, that's judged to be inferior, requires an adjective. So there are black novelists and novelists. There are women physicians and physicians. Male nurses and nurses. — Gloria Steinem

Something snapped into my thinking then. Told is something that has been, something that is, and something that will be. Told was a noun and a verb. He was an active author. He was Told, he is Told, and he will be Told forever. Only we were in a time frame - contained as Words of a book. Time was his invented concept to display his answer to the problem of Luman. Time is what allowed something to be told - Told. I felt a rapid surge of excitement. "We can't make anything more worth telling than him. — K.A. Gunn

Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day. — Barbara De Angelis

Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs. The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place. — E.B. White

The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

In a modern dictionary, the noun "melancholy" has two definitions. First, it means "thoughtful or gentle sadness. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

The other New Testament word for anger I want you to notice is orge. This is "a more settled and long lasting attitude often continuing toward the goal of seeking revenge." The verb form of this word, with an added Greek prefix, means to be provoked to irritation, exasperation, or embitterment.3 The verb can be used in a positive sense, as in Ephesians 4:26. The noun form orge appears in Ephesians 4:31, where it is translated as anger, in Colossians 3:6, and in James 1:20 among many other places. — Jim Logan

In my first leadership position, I mistakenly thought that being named the leader meant that I was the leader. Back then I defined leading as a noun - as the position I was appointed to - not a verb - as what I was doing. Though I had been hired as the senior pastor, I quickly discovered the real leader of the church was a down-to-earth farmer named Claude, who had been earning his leadership influence through many positive actions over many years. He later explained it to me, saying, "John, all the letters — John C. Maxwell

She had never heard the word 'intellectual' used as a noun before she went to Barnard, and she took it to heart. It was a brave noun, a proud noun, a noun suggesting lifelong dedication to lofty things and a cool disdain for the commonplace. An intellectual might lose her virginity to a soldier in the park, but she could learn to look back on it with wry, amused detachment. An intellectual might have a mother who showed her underpants when drunk, but she wouldn't let it bother her. And Emily Grimes might not be an intellectual yet, but if she took copious notes in even the dullest of her classes, and if she read every night until her eyes ached, it was only a question of time. — Richard Yates

Theater used to be a verb; it used to be an act. But nowadays it is just a noun. It is a place. — Martha Graham

The soul is a verb." He impales a lit candle on a spike. "Not a noun. — David Mitchell

What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender. — Terry Jones

I'm trying to tell
MiSSSisss WaSShington
about our ceremony for Father.
But it takes time to
match every noun and verb,
sort all the tenses,
remember all the articles,
set the tone for every s.
MiSSSisss WaSShington says
if every learner waits
to speak perfectly,
no one would learn
a new language.
Being stubborn
won't make you fluent.
Practicing will!
The more mistakes you make,
the more you'll learn not to.
They laugh. — Thanhha Lai

All the words in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. — Joseph Devlin

Do you think it's possible that things that seem to be discrete in three dimensions might all be part of the same bigger object in four dimensions? ... What if humanity- that collective noun we so often employ- really is, at a higher level, a singular noun? What it what we perceive in three dimensions as seven billion individual human beings are really all just aspects of one giant being? — Robert J. Sawyer

And why do we reduce the beauty of relating to relationship? Why are we in such a hurry? - because to relate is insecure, and relationship is a security, relationship has a certainty. Relating is just a meeting of two strangers, maybe just an overnight stay and in the morning we say good-bye. Who knows what is going to happen tomorrow? And we are so afraid that we want to make it certain, we want to make it predictable. We would like tomorrow to be according to our ideas; we don't allow it freedom to have its own say. So we immediately reduce every verb to a noun. — Rajneesh

Matter. noun: what we're made of; the very stuff of the universe. verb: to command your contribution to the substance composing everything; to be. — Laurie Perez

At the U of U, we were inventing a new language. One of us would contribute a verb, another a noun, then a third person would figure out ways to string the elements together to actually say something. — Ed Catmull

Who dreamt
and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space
through images juxtaposed,
and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images
and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun
and dash of consciousness together
jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human
prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame — Allen Ginsberg

Art is an idea that has found its perfect visual expression. And design is the vehicle by which this expression is made possible. Art is a noun, and design is a noun and also a verb. Art is a product and design is a process. Design is the foundation of all the arts. — Paul Rand

God isn't a noun but a process ... a continual, infinitely creative outpouring of love and light onto all living things. — Marianne Williamson

Saw you walking barefoot
taking a long look
at the new moon's eyelid
later spread
sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair
asleep but not oblivious
of the unslept unsleeping
elsewhere
Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve
Syntax of rendition:
verb pilots the plane
adverb modifies action
verb force-feeds noun
submerges the subject
noun is choking
verb disgraced goes on doing
now diagram the sentence — Adrienne Rich

I wonder at my incapacity for easy banter, smooth conversation, empty words to fill awkward moments. I don't have a closet filled with umms and ellipses ready to insert at the beginnings and ends of sentences. I don't know how to be a verb, an adverb, any kind of modifier. I'm a noun through and through. — Tahereh Mafi

If you look up the meaning of healing you can find many different definitions. There's the adjective, noun, and verb (with and without objects). For argument's sake we will use the verb. Still there are many definitions. The one that fits here is to free from evil; cleanse; purify; to heal the soul.
Free from evil, even if you didn't know it was there. — Mandi Lynn

The Greek word for "thanks" is the verb of the Greek noun for grace! Giving thanks is a spontaneous outflow of seeing that grace which was given to you in Christ Jesus. — Rudi Louw

Writing is better if it's kept simple. Every sentence doesn't need to have perfect noun/verb agreement. I've said 'ain't' on the air. Because I sometimes use 'ain't' when I'm talking. — Stuart Scott

Jobs, who could identify with each of those sentiments, wrote some of the lines himself, including "They push the human race forward." By the time of the Boston Macworld in early August, they had produced a rough version. They agreed it was not ready, but Jobs used the concepts, and the "think different" phrase, in his keynote speech there. "There's a germ of a brilliant idea there," he said at the time. "Apple is about people who think outside the box, who want to use computers to help them change the world." They debated the grammatical issue: If "different" was supposed to modify the verb "think," it should be an adverb, as in "think differently." But Jobs insisted that he wanted "different" to be used as a noun, as in "think victory" or "think beauty." Also, it echoed colloquial use, as in "think big. — Walter Isaacson

When I said.
A rose is a rose is a rose.
And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what
did I do I caressed completely caressed and addressed
a noun. — Gertrude Stein

Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective. — Rob Bell

Leadership- The Noun and the Verb of a Leader - The amalgamation of WHO you are as a person and HOW you conduct yourself becomes crucial...you have to play the noun and verb both !!! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

I remember that I wanted to kill It,' Bill said, and for the first time (and ever after) he heard the pronoun gain proper-noun status in his own voice. — Stephen King

Love is more than a noun-it is a verb; it is more than a feeling-it is caring, sharing, helping, sacrificing. — William Arthur Ward

Anne Hathaway
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed. — Carol Ann Duffy

If the noun is good and the verb is strong, you almost never need an adjective. — J. Anthony Lukas

The book was sloppily written in many parts (the words came too quickly and too easily) and there was hardly a noun in any sentence that was not holding hands with the nearest and most commonly available adjective - scalding coffee and tremulous fear are the sorts of thing you will find throughout. Over-certified adjectives are the mark of most best-seller writing. — Norman Mailer

Don't worry, due'ane," He murmured lowly...."Who's Dewey Anne." I asked him, voice gruff. He was so familiar, this Bracken, but so strange, naked next to me. I could touch
him, I realized with wonder. I could run my hands from his flank to his shoulder, and he would welcome the touch because he was mine.
You are." He whispered, and I met his eyes. "It's elfish, the feminine noun
for 'other equal half'. You are my other. My everything."
--Wounded
(Bracken and Cory) — Amy Lane

I," she [the Holy Spirit] opened her hands to include Jesus and Papa, "I am a verb. I am that I am. I will be who I will be. I am a verb! I am alive, dynamic, ever active and moving. I am a being verb. And as my very essence is a verb, I am more attuned to verbs than nouns. Verbs such as confessing, repenting, living, loving, responding, growing, reaping, changing, sowing, running, dancing, singing, and on and on. Humans, on the other hand, have a knack for taking a verb that is alive and full of grace and turning it into a dead noun or principle that reeks of rules. Nouns exist because there is a created universe and physical reality, but the universe is only a mass of nouns, it is dead. Unless 'I am' there are no verbs and verbs are what makes the universe alive. — Wm. Paul Young

Young, middle-aged, elderly, old, dead: this was how life conjugated. (No, life was a noun, so this is how life declined. Yes, that was better in any case, life declined. — Julian Barnes

Quotation is a noun. Quote is a verb. — Eusebius Clay

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something. — H.L. Mencken

The bank transforms itself from an agent of debt to a catalyst for distribution and circulation. Like money in a digital age, it becomes less a thing of value in itself than a way of fostering the value creation and exchange of others. Less a noun than a verb. — Douglas Rushkoff

[On suicide:] It's the only cause of death that can be used as a noun to describe the dead person. If you die of cancer you are not called 'a cancer.' If someone else shoots you, you are not referred to as 'a murder.' But if you shoot yourself, you are labeled as a suicide. Your death becomes your definition. — Joan Wickersham

I was rather unwilling to study Latin grammar. It seemed absurd to waste time analyzing, every word I came across - noun, genitive, singular, feminine - when its meaning was quite plain. I thought I might just as well describe my pet in order to know it - order, vertebrate; division, quadruped; class, mammalia; genus, felinus; species, cat; individual, Tabby. — Helen Keller

Love is not a verb. Love is a noun. Love's activity is people breathing, cells dividing, a dove taking a flight.
This grammar of life not all can see. — Mohit Parikh

The police never saw a noun they didn't want to turn into a verb, so it quickly became "to action", as in you action me to undertake a Falcon assessment, I action a Falcon assessment, a Falcon assessment has been actioned and we all action in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine.
This, to review a major inqurity is to review the list of "actions" and their consequences, in the hope that you'll spot something that thirty-odd highly trained and experienced detectives didn't. — Ben Aaronovitch

MOMB - noun - One who can deal with all of the INSANITY of being a MOM ... Because she's the BOMB! — Tanya Masse

'Swing' is an adjective or a verb, not a noun. All jazz musicians should swing. There is no such thing as a 'swing band' in music. — Artie Shaw

You are not really a noun; you are a verb. You are not really a person; you are a soul in action. You are your embryo, you are your baby, you are your child, you are your adult, and you are your spirit when you pass through this body through this lifetime. — Catherine Carrigan

Back when they had been teenagers who thought love was a noun, a thing you could possess. — Marcus Sakey

People think of security as a noun, something you go buy. In reality, it's an abstract concept like happiness. Openness is unbelievably helpful to security. — James Gosling

Fail is a verb not a noun, most people think that when they fail, they become a noun and call themselves failures. People have to learn from their mistakes just as children learn to ride bicycles by falling off bicycles. Mistakes can be priceless if we are willing to learn from them because the price to becoming rich is the willingness to make mistakes and learn from them without blaming or justifying — Robert Kiyosaki

Presence is a noun, not a verb; it is a state of being, not doing. States of being are not highly valued in a culture that places a high priority on doing. Yet, true presence or "being with" another person carries with it a silent power. — Jay Allison

At best she's a scrawny, hollow-eyed croneling." "Croneling?" John tilted his head in perplexity. "Croneling. Noun. One who has yet to achieve cronehood. The adolescent phase of the British crone," Avery lectured. — Connie Brockway

While there are 'women writers' there are not, and have never been, 'men writers.' This is an empty category, a class without specimens; for the noun 'writer' - the very verb 'writing' - always implies masculinity. — Joyce Carol Oates