I look upon this as I did upon the Dictionary: it is all work, and my inducement to it is not love or desire of fame, but the want of money, which is the only motive to writing that I know of.(On the task of editing Shakespeare, which John Hawkins told Johnson should be intrinsically […]
Dictionary Quotes
I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.
Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things they denote.
If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?
Lexicographer: n.s. A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
I misplaced my dictionary. Now I’m at a loss for words.
Its most important claim on our attentnion is that Johnson’s [dictionary] is the only English dictionary that can be called a great work of literature. Most reference books are interesting only as long as they’re current; Johnson remains fascinating long after his definitions have been superseded.
Sometimes you can’t look up the correct spelling of a word in the dictionary because you don’t know how to spell it.
A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise.
“Just the man I was looking for,” said a voice at Winston’s back. He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research Department… Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak […]
