32 Quotes Tagged: definitions

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

Wit is educated insolence.

Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

Network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections [....]

Reticulated: Made of network; formed with interstitial vacuities.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

Definitions are the foundation of reason. You can’t reason without them.

If you can’t define something you have no formal rational way of knowing that it exists. Neither can you really tell anyone else what it is. There is, in fact, no formal difference between inability to define and stupidity.

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Hypocrite: The man who murdered his parents, and then pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was an orphan.

Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.