Quotes About Definition

I shouldn't say I'm looking forward to leading a normal life, because I don't know what normal is.

I was afraid of Sonya being defined by her sexuality because that's not fair to her. I don't want Sonya to be defined by who she loves.

It can even be a single note which defines the entire song.

That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

I don't really consider any of my novels 'crime' novels.

There are definitions of morbid obesity. Doctors define it.

I don't know how one actually would define obscenity. I'm sure the definition is different according to the age one is living in.

I don't necessarily want to be defined as an action star. I love movies, and my movie culture, luckily because of my parents and my family, is quite obscure and independent.

It is at best insufficient and at worst inaccurate to settle on a definition of the Enlightenment, for the obvious reason that there was not just one.

My tattered old Webster's defines hero as a legendary figure . . . endowed with great strength and ability . . . an illustrious warrior . . . a person possessing great courage. There's another important characteristic of heroes: they place themselves at risk for the benefit of others.

In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.

We have discussed your definition, analyzed its ramifications to a reasonable depth, and accept it, said the expendable. Meaning I gave you what you wanted? Ambition and desire are human traits. You gave us what we lacked.

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage... As chairman emeritus of the extreme right-wing National Organization for Marriage

I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational.

You are a sceptic. Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith. What are you? To define is to limit.

What are you? To define is to limit.

He let the pieces of the napkin flutter to the floor and said something strange about words being good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't.

If an urn lacks the characteristics of an urn, how can we call it an urn?

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.

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.

He understood what the priest could not. That what we seek is the worthy adversary. For we strike out to fall flailing through demons of wire and crepe and we long for something of substance to oppose us. Something to contain us or to stay our hand. Otherwise there were no boundaries to our own being and we too must extend our claims until we lose all definition. Until we must be swallowed up at last by the very void to which we wished to stand opposed.

The slant black shapes of the mounted men stenciled across the stone with a definition austere and implacable like shapes capable of violating their covenant with the flesh that authored them.

and they would listen to her comments and then move on. That the search for its definition was inexorably buried in and subject to the definition it sought. Or that the world's reality could not be a category among others therein contained.

What was this yearning, tearing at her insides like hunger and thirst? It couldn't be love. Love was warm and soft, like a bed of leaves. But this was dark, like the shade under a poisonous shrub, and it was hungry. So hungry. It must have some other name, just as there couldn't be the same word for life and death, or for moon and sun