A Quote by Ambrose Bierce

LEXICOGRAPHER, n. A pestilent fellow who, under the pretense of recording some particular stage in the development of a language, does what he can to arrest its growth, stiffen its flexibility and mechanize its methods.

Ambrose Bierce

Quote Topics

Arrest Development Does Fellow Flexibility Growth Language Lexicographer Methods Particular Pretense Recording Some Stage

Quote Author

Ambrose Bierce
American - Journalist
June 24, 1842 - 1914

The in-love experience does not focus on our own growth or on the growth and development of the other person. Rather, it gives us the sense that we have arrived and that we do not need further growth.

Gary Chapman

Each stage of development, remember, has a dialectic of progress--in plain language, every new development is good news, bad news.

Ken Wilber

In software, consultants sometimes tell you to buy into certain software-development methods to the exclusion of other methods. That’s unfortunate because if you buy into any single methodology 100 percent, you’ll see the whole world in terms of that methodology. In some instances, you’ll miss opportunities to use other methods better suited to your current problem.

Steve McConnell

If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again. You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That's flexibility.

Antonin Scalia

One has to choose between engaging in stylistic research or the mere recording of facts. I feel that a filmmaker must go beyond the recording of facts. Moreover, I believe that Africans, in particular, must reinvent cinema. It will be a difficult task because our viewing audience is used to a specific film language, but a choice has to be made: either one is very popular and one talks to people in a simple and plain manner, or else one searches for an African film language that would exclude chattering and focus more on how to make use of visuals and sounds.

Djibril Diop Mambety

I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.

Mahatma Gandhi

When you stiffen, you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information.

Toni Morrison

Put a symbol, or language of some sort, in a painting and it will be noticed by the viewer whether or not they can read that particular language.

Mike Svob

One of the joys of language is its constant evolution, and a lexicographer's job is both to track new words and to reassess those from the past.

Susie Dent

You don't need any indictment in order to arrest someone; probable cause is sufficient to arrest civilians, so it must be enough to arrest police.

Al Sharpton

I don't have any particular goals in making a recording. In a way the recording is itself the goal. The music comes into my mind, and from there the main job is to give form to it.

John McLaughlin

The bicameral mind with its controlling gods was evolved as a final stage of the evolution of language. And in this development lies the origin of civilization.

Julian Jaynes

There is a strange fact about the human mind, a fact that differentiates the mind sharply from the body. The body is limited in ways that the mind is not. One sign of this is that the body does not continue indefinitely to grow in strength and develop in skill and grace. By the time most people are thirty years old, their bodies are as good as they will ever be; in fact, many persons' bodies have begun to deteriorate by that time. But there is no limit to the amount of growth and development that the mind can sustain. The mind does not stop growing at any particular age.

Mortimer Adler

Some people welcome the flexibility of a zero-hours contract. But their growth is symptomatic of a wider issue - increasing job insecurity and falling living standards in David Cameron's Britain.

Chuka Umunna

At many companies, business development is treated as a sales tool for incremental growth, but I believe that business development can bend our growth curve in a big way. It should accelerate our ability to grow, helping us quickly close gaps or leap ahead of competitors.