Top 100 Descriptive Quotes
#1. You don't need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you've written, you should be able to point to any given element - be that a line of dialogue, a descriptive phrase, a plot point - and say why it's there.
Diana Gabaldon
#2. Rowley had thought at first the beast had no name; it had taken him a while to understand that it had a perfectly good, descriptive name to which it was as likely to answer as any other, and that name was Cat. There was something terribly Clem about that.
K.J. Charles
#3. The violence in the Old Testament and New Testament is descriptive. The violence in the Koran is for all time and it is prescriptive. And Mohammed said "I have been made victorious through terror.".
Pamela Geller
#4. Because I am fully aware of what the word "fat" means - what it really means, when you say it, or think it. It's not just a simple, descriptive word like "brunette" or "34." It's a swear word. It's a weapon. It's a sociological subspecies. It's an accusation, dismissal, and rejection.
Caitlin Moran
#5. If Art relates itself to an Object, it becomes descriptive, divisionist, literary.
Robert Delaunay
#6. I suggest that the emergence of descriptive language is at the root of the human power of imagination, of human inventiveness, and therefore the emergence of world 3.
Karl R. Popper
#7. In recent times, Surrealist painters have used descriptive illusionistic academic methods.
Hans Arp
#8. The great art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body, but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.
Louise Brooks
#9. Yin and yang are descriptive terms that are used to describe all levels of phenomena. Yin is the stable, unmoving, hidden aspect of an object. Yang is the changing, moving, revealing aspect of an object.
Paul Grilley
#10. Science, as long as it limits itself to the descriptive study of the laws of nature, has no moral or ethical quality and this applies to the physical as well as the biological sciences.
Ernst Boris Chain
#11. I found out after reading quite a lot of it that it is not rated very high. He has a very descriptive way of writing but also lengthy. May not want to finish!!!!! This was his 1sr and only try ast Historical Fiction!
Wilkie Collins
#12. We have faith in the photograph not only because it works on a physically descriptive level, but in a broader sense because it confirms our sense of omnipresence as well as the validity of the material world.
Fred Ritchin
#13. Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is, not what ought to be. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive; it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes. Indeed, science disavows purposes.
Jonathan Sacks
#14. I like writing in an illustrative, descriptive way. I prefer describing to rather than explaining.
Iron & Wine
#15. Animation scripts tend to be much more descriptive and are lighter on dialogue.
Douglas Wood
#16. Interactive Decision Theory would perhaps be a more descriptive name for the discipline usually called Game Theory.
Robert Aumann
#17. Like an apparently strict musical form it breaks the five minute whole into its structural parts - a descriptive preamble, the action of taking the cards, the development of the cards' manipulation and the revelation of what has been achieved.
Gavin Bryars
#18. The other contested term is recovered memory therapy. As far as I can tell, no one practicsing psychotherapy today endorses this term as a descriptive of what they do... there are no self-described recovered memory therapists...
Richard J. McNally
#19. Since my woman's world is perceived greatly through the emotions and the senses, I treat it that way in my writing - and am often overweighted with heavy descriptive passages and a kaleidoscope of similes.
Sylvia Plath
#20. So to me, fat just seems to be right to the point and the most descriptive way to say it.
Camryn Manheim
#21. Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretive.
Elliott Erwitt
#22. Always refer to those of the female gender as ladies.
The descriptive woman is usually reserved in Dixie for females of questionable respect.
Ann Barrett Batson
#23. We, who have had tender, perfect mothers, would like to make it law that the other kind should always be called 'she-parents,' or 'female progenitors,' or any other descriptive title, but not profane the sacred name of mother!
Florence L. Barclay
#24. Daniel Woodrell has made a name as a master of prose with personality - a densely descriptive, gamey form of storytelling, one might say traditional storytelling - of late rather an unfashionable mode.
Sarah Hall
#25. What a newspaper needs in its news, in its headlines, and on its editorial page is terseness, humor, descriptive power, satire, originality, good literary style, clever condensation and accuracy, accuracy, accuracy.
Joseph Pulitzer
#26. I was just being honest and descriptive." "No, you were being an asshole." "It's not my fault they have to always be the same thing.
Paul Neilan
#27. we may experience an absolute positive change and do the undone if we shift our thoughts from descriptive thinking to prescriptive thinking
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#28. The only sort of descriptive adjective or catch phrase for my music would be 'eclectic.'
Moby
#29. Metrical geometry is thus a part of descriptive geometry, and descriptive geometry is all geometry.
Arthur Cayley
#30. The most vitally characteristic fact about mathematics is, in my opinion, its quite peculiar relationship to the natural sciences, or more generally, to any science which interprets experience on a higher than purely descriptive level.
John Von Neumann
#31. I could be described, sure, with words like cool guy or, again, cool incarnate, rebel, badass, whatever, but I viewed these as just descriptive words . . . they serviced me; I no longer was defined by any of them, and I no longer sought to become the definition of anything other than myself.
A.D. Aliwat
#33. I'm not the most detailed writer. I have a tendency to be more action-oriented vs. descriptive.
Lisa Gardner
#34. The hardest thing about choosing good names is that it requires good descriptive skills and a shared cultural background. This is a teaching issue rather than a technical, business, or
management issue.
Robert C. Martin
#35. A long descriptive name is better than a short enigmatic name. A long descriptive name is better than a long descriptive comment.
Robert C. Martin
#36. Descriptive anatomy is to physiology what geography is to history, and just as it is not enough to know the typography of a country to understand its history, so also it is not enough to know the anatomy of organs to understand their functions.
Claude Bernard
#37. My eyes skimmed over the legalese and bureaucratese (two languages I had never mastered), until I found something descriptive to
Neal Stephenson
#38. Crabgrass is aptly descriptive of this hated weed, for it does scuttle quickly through a lawn.
Allen Lacy
#39. I was stupid, the official descriptive phrase for happy.
Daniel Handler
#40. The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh-Morpork some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to ?put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honest.
Terry Pratchett
#41. The ideal of a pure phenomenology will be perfected only by answering this question; pure phenomenology is to be separated sharply from psychology at large and, specifically, from the descriptive psychology of the phenomena of consciousness.
Edmund Husserl
#42. At least descriptive psychology is probably, taken as a whole, a form of anthropomorphism, a nibbling at our own limits.
Franz Kafka
#43. A good writer gets better only by learning to cut, to remove the ornamental, the descriptive, the narrative, and especially the deeply felt and meaningful. What remains? The story remains.
David Mamet
#44. Fiery red curls catch my attention. I've never seen hair like hers. It's long and hangs to just above her ass, but it's not trashy looking. The curls are large and thick. If I were a descriptive man, I'd almost call her hair luscious. But, I'm not so I'll leave it at fiery and thick.
Rein Scott
#45. I've always thought of fat as just a descriptive word.
Camryn Manheim
#46. I won't say the pain was indescribable, since there are plenty of good descriptive words: excruciating, agonizing, unbearable, and so on.
Jeff Strand
#47. Is it too ingenuous to imagine that anything can be left to say about a garden? Garden literature, descriptive, reminiscent, and technical, has blossomed so profusely among us during the last decade, that he should be an expert indeed who ventures to add thereto.
Harrison Gray Otis Dwight
#48. He looks like a man.'
'How descriptive,' Susan said in a droll tone. 'Remind me never to advise you to seek work as a novelist.
Julia Quinn
#49. There are tools that help sharpen freestyle skills like having a diverse vernacular, some sense of music theory, being outspoken, phrasing, spacing, cross word puzzles, thesauruses, the ability to expand on an issue and embellish that with more descriptive terminology.
Myka 9
#50. Grapes are juicy. Strawberries. Oranges. Good pork chops are succulent," said Dusty. "But the word isn't accurately descriptive of a person."
Smiling with delight, Ahriman said, "Oh, really, not accurately descriptive? Be careful housepainter. Your genes are showing. What if I were a cannibal?
Dean Koontz
#51. Mark Nanos and I have suggested "Apostolic Judaism" as a descriptive term applicable to the early Jesus movement, including with respect to Paul and his communities.[28]
Mark D. Nanos
#52. Science is analytical, descriptive, informative. Man does not live by bread alone, but by science he attempts to do so. Hence the deadliness of all that is purely scientific.
Eric Gill
#53. I hate the word fine. It is descriptive of nothing. Socially acceptable filler with no true meaning. It's what you say when you are checking your feelings, unwilling or unable to let yourself be too happy or too sad. Fine. It's an emotional bookmark. A pause until you can continue the story.
Emme Burton
#54. The virtual suppression of ethical discussion after 1845 produces the semblance of purely descriptive analysis, dressed in the mantle of positivist objectivity, analysis which is, in fact, strung to a framework of crude, because unexplicated, moral assumptions.
John Carroll
#55. Wuthering being a significant, provincial adjective descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather.
Emily Bronte
#56. There is probably no finer prose writer alive in Britain now, no-one better at making a sentence, no-one better at descriptive writing, no-one who can get so close to the vividness of other peoples interior selves.
Linda Grant
#57. Prediction can never be absolutely valid and therefore science can never prove some generalization or even test a single descriptive statement and in that way arrive at final truth.
Gregory Bateson
#58. Matter can be conveniently divided for descriptive purposes into space , time , mass, and energy . However we can only describe any one of these phenomena in terms of the other three. Any definitions we care to make about matter are thus tautological .
Peter J. Carroll
#59. When you have a company name that is to descriptive about what you do, you don't stand out.
Philip J. Kaplan
#60. If you're gonna use simile, analogy, metaphor, be descriptive and have some flowery adjectives and a few odd nouns and some engaging bits of dialogue or sentiment, then you're sort of writing a novel, really. But rock lyrics are not really known for their sophistication.
Ian Anderson
#61. He gave them descriptive names that wouldn't scare people. It wouldn't do to call them Nemesis or Thor or Grond. So instead it was Potatohead, Mr. Spinny, Acorn, Peach Pit, Scoop, Big Boy, and Kidney Bean.
Neal Stephenson
#62. [L]anguage functions best when we mediate between the descriptive and prescriptive influences, changing the rules to better suit some things, but sticking to them for others.
John Wiswell
#63. If too descriptive, you lose the readers' ability to interpret. And that's a vital organ you don't want to fuck with.
Jason Lebowitz
#64. What if, when Tracy Austin writes that after her 1989 car crash, 'I quickly accepted that there was nothing I could do about it,' the statement is not only true but exhaustively descriptive of the entire acceptance process she went through?
David Foster Wallace
#65. What marks the transition from non-sentient to sentient beings? A model of increasing complexity based on evolution through natural selection is simply a descriptive hypothesis, a kind of euphemism for "mystery," and not a satisfactory explanation.
Dalai Lama XIV
#66. The general statement that the mental faculties are class concepts, belonging to descriptive psychology, relieves us of the necessity of discussing them and their significance at the present stage of our inquiry.
Wilhelm Wundt
#67. I don't like super-descriptive modern fiction. I like, "Here's what was happening in 1582 all over the planet." Then that gets my imagination going.
Andrew Bird
#68. A book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical.
Paul Dirac
#69. [Y]ou were too alert to the figurative possibilities of words not to see the phrase [angle of repose] as descriptive of human as well as detrital rest. As you said, it was too good for mere dirt; you tried to apply it to your own wandering and uneasy life ... I wonder if you ever reached it.
Wallace Stegner
#70. I think each of my books attempts to create its own voice so I'm not even sure I have a signature style, other than certain descriptive tendencies, an interest in the sound of language. Maybe an immersion in place.
Paul Lisicky
#71. Descriptive grammar is an attempt to give an account of what the current system is for either a society or an individual, whatever you happen to be studying.
Noam Chomsky
#72. God has disclosed himself in descriptive terms that give us enough information to be able to know who he is, and he has hidden enough of himself for us to learn the balance between faith and reason.
Ravi Zacharias
#73. Bunches of flowers and kisses, their bodies locked together by a stopwatch.
Descriptive on an affair
Susan Richards Shreve
#74. The fantastical images in my works are descriptive in a different way - a metaphorical way - that removes you from reality. Then, this visually removed point of view allows you to deal with a very heavy subject.
Signe Baumane
#75. There were a million things, everything, I didn't know. I was stupid, the official descriptive phrase for happy. I took this thing I'm giving you back, this thing you gave me as the star we were waiting for finally emerged.
Daniel Handler
#76. At the descriptive level, certainly, you would expect different cultures to develop different sorts of ethics and obviously they have; that doesn't mean that you can't think of overarching ethical principles you would want people to follow in all kinds of places.
Peter Singer
#77. I wouldn't call myself a synaesthete in the sense that Nabokov was. But I'll talk about a sound as being cold blue or dark brown. For descriptive purposes, yes, I often see colors when I'm listening to music and think, 'Oh, there's not enough sort of yellowy stuff in here, or not enough white.'
Brian Eno
#78. Reconnaissance memoranda should always be written in the simplest style and be purely descriptive. They should never stray from their objective by introducing extraneous ideas.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#79. The thing about Depeche songs is that they're so descriptive. For me, they tell some kind of story about a character who's trying to redeem himself or to find something to believe in-some kind of faith or hope.
Dave Gahan
#80. I like Sade. I'm re-reading Juliette. I skip the philosophy and read the salacious bits. His descriptive imagination is incredible.
Michael Gira
#81. The ups and downs of this cosmos may sometimes be acknowledged to be metaphorical ups and downs, but until about Newton's time most people took the "up" of heaven and the "down" of hell to be more or less descriptive.
Northrop Frye
#82. My staff tells me not to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it's true.
Harry Reid
#83. What's descriptive isn't necessarily prescriptive.
Alistair Begg
#84. Relationality [is] not only [a] descriptive or historical fact of our formation, but also an ongoing normative dimension of our social and political lives, one in which we are compelled to take stock of our interdependence.
Judith Butler
#85. Abilene (AB-a-lene) adj. Descriptive of the pleasing coolness on the reverse side of the pillow.
Douglas Adams
#86. It is through color changes that we go forward ... all decisions come about as the picture is made and in response to painterly demands. The descriptive and anecdotal come second.
Wolf Kahn
#87. God's Word does not merely impart information; it actually creates life. It's not only descriptive; it's effective too, God speaking is God acting.
Michael Horton
#88. What parents said they valued most were discussions with teachers and heads, and what they wanted was more descriptive information in their children's school reports. This is particularly true for primary schools. Parents wanted to know much more than just how their children were doing academically.
Carol J. Adams
#89. Something I've learned being in this industry for so long is that if you want to work with somebody, call them up. Very few musicians have any illusions about genre boundaries. They are useful descriptive terms, but they don't really bind musicians.
John Darnielle
#90. Many there are who, while they bear the name of Christians, are totally unacquainted with the power of their divine religion. But for their crimes the Gospel is in no wise answerable. Christianity is with them a geographical, not a descriptive, appellation.
Frederick William Faber
#91. Of the individual poems, some are more lyric and some are more descriptive or narrative. Each poem is fixed in a moment. All those moments written or read together take on the movement and architecture of a narrative.
Marilyn Hacker
#92. I think every writer has a book that haunts them, and on some level, every book you write is a reaction to it. 'Lolita' is that book for me. Nabokov's love of wordplay, descriptive detail, artfully complex plots, and his themes of obsession and lost love, are inspiring.
Marisha Pessl
#93. A painting of a person can be descriptive, but for me it's about all the things that make up a picture - the feelings, the brushstrokes - more than describing somebody. People latch on to the personalities when they talk about my work and forget the other parts.
Elizabeth Peyton
#94. Descriptive statistics exist to simplify, which always implies some loss of nuance or detail.
Charles Wheelan
#95. Writing style can be descriptive without being wordy - and wordy without being descriptive
Rayne Hall
#96. Evangelical preaching was also characterized by the extemporaneous interlacing of biblical passages with descriptive evangelical terminology that was designed to awaken people emotionally to their sins and cause them to tremble, shed tears, and fall to the ground.
Grant H. Palmer
#97. Words have a universe of qualities other than those of descriptive relation: Hardness, Density, Sound-Shape, Vector-Force, & Degrees of Transparency/Opacity.
Clark Coolidge
#98. The sun, like a boil on the bright blue ass of day, rolled gradually forward and spread its legs wide to reveal the pubic thatch of night, a hairy darkness in which stars crawled like lice, and the moon crabbed slowly upward like an albino dog tick striving for the anal gulch.
Joe R. Lansdale
#99. The river was so blue it seemed to be breathing.
Brian Morton
#100. All this happened in much less time than it takes to tell, since I am trying to interpret for you into slow speech the instantaneous effect of visual impressions.
Joseph Conrad
