Quotes on Definitions

Evil, by definition, is that which endangers the good, and the good is that which we perceive as a value.

Artistic imagination must remain free. It is by definition free from any fidelity to circumstances, especially to the intoxicating circumstances of history.

A prayer in its simplest definition is merely a wish turned Godward.

People of dua are optimistic by definition. They know that dua and thoughts like 'unlikely' or 'impossible' don't coexist.

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

The makers of dictionaries are dependent upon specialists for their definitions. A specialist's definition may be true or it may be erroneous. But its truth cannot be increased or its error diminished by its acceptance by the lexicographer. Each definition must stand on its own merits.

The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about.

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

Later, her first intense, serious love affair, yes then she'd lost something more tangible, if undefinable: her heart? her independence? her control of, definition of, self? That first true loss, the furious bafflement of it. And never again quite so assured, confident.

When we are young, we spend much time and pains in filling our note-books with all definitions of Religion, Love, Poetry, Politics, Art, in the hope that, in the course of a few years, we shall have condensed into our encyclopaedia the net value of all the theories at which the world has yet arrived. But year after year our tables get no completeness, and at last we discover that our curve is a parabola, whose arcs will never meet.

Every decision you make - every decision that you make every second - is not a decision about what to do, it is a decision about who you are. Every act is an act of self-definition.

I have a definition of success. For me it's very simple. It's not about wealth and fame and power. It's about how many shining eyes I have around me.

The trouble is that nonviolence is so often defined as refusal to fight, and that is the American definition of cowardice. In fact, marching unarmed against the guns and dogs of the police requires more courage than does aggression. The perverted idea of manhood coming from the barrel of a gun is what keeps people from understanding nonviolence.

I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped.

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.

When her muzzle grew more white than brown, the chipmunk forgot that she and the squirrel had had nothing to talk about. She forgot the definition of "jazz" as well and came to think of it as every beautiful thing she had ever failed to appreciate: the taste of warm rain; the smell of a baby; the din of a swollen river, rushing past her tree and onward to infinity.

Definitions.... are never really needed, and rarely of any use

The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course. Until Caroline had died I had belonged to that other world, the place of innocence, and linear expectations, where I thught grief was a simple, wrenching realm of sadness and longing that graduallu receded. What that definition left out was the body blow that loss inflicts, as well as the temporary madness, and a range of less straightforward emotions shocking in their intensity.

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

These pages are not my confession; they’re my definition. And I feel, as I begin to write it, that I can write it with some semblance of truth.