Peter Farb Quotes

Drop a word in the ocean of meaning and concentric ripples form. To define a single word means to try to catch those ripples. No one’s hands are fast enough.

Don't hate the word, playa; hate the dictionary.

The meaning of words has become so blurred by past usage that 'abstract' is identified with 'vague' and 'unreal,' and 'inwardness' with a sort of traditional beatitude... The conception of the word 'plastic' has also been limited by individual interpretations.

When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.

According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.

We think people go to a dictionary to find out what a word means. Most people go to the dictionary because they don't want to look stupid.

Faced with the nonsense question 'What is the meaning of a word?' and perhaps dimly recognizing it to be nonsense, we are nevertheless not inclined to give it up.

Words are not simple things: they take unto themselves, as they have through time, power and meaning.

The closed language does not demonstrate and explain it communicates decision, dictum, command. Where it defines, the definition becomes "separation of good from evil;" it establishes unquestionable

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

me: why is it upset? shouldn't it be downset? gideon: i will file a lawsuit against the dictionaries first thing tomorrow morning. we're going to tear merriam a new asshole and throw webster inside of it.

‎Perfect? How can you define a word without concrete meaning?

For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word meaning it can be explained thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

We must find out what words are and how they function. They become images when written down, but images of words repeated in the mind and not of the image of the thing itself.

Belief begins where science leaves off and ends where science begins.

Tis I that call, remember Milo's end, Wedged in that timber which he strove to rend.

Exes should never, never go out with or marry other people but should remain celibate to the end of their days in order to provide you with a mental fallback position.

We are all facing the end one day or another. I say, live a good and prosperous life, make sure your choices count, make them count.

...a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition.

Sometimes, words have consequences you don't intend them to mean.

Time puts an end to speculation in opinions, and confirms the laws of nature.

The supreme end is the freedom of the spirit.

For many, religion has to do with what we are allowed to do and not allowed to do. In the end, that doesn't bear fruit.

He was the closest thing I'd ever had to something, or someone, that mattered. But in the end, close didn't count. You were either in, or you weren't.

Living a life is like constructing a building: if you start wrong, you'll end wrong.