Literal Meaning Quotes

#1. Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music. They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can't.

Josiah Bartlett

#2. In this crazy mirror of terror and art a pseudo-quotation made up of obscure Shakespeareanisms (Chapter Three) somehow produces, despite its lack of literal meaning, the blurred diminutive image of the acrobatic performance that so gloriously supplies the bravura ending for the next chapter.

Vladimir Nabokov

#3. Try all things by the written word, and let all bow down before it. You are in danger of [fanaticism] every hour, if you depart ever so little from Scripture; yea, or from the plain, literal meaning of an text, taken in connection with the context.

John Wesley

#4. The primary and literal meaning of the Bible, then, is its centripetal or poetic meaning.

Northrop Frye

#5. In entirety, valentine is a FUCKING DAY, rather than the sanctity of its literal meaning.

Michael Bassey Johnson

#6. The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau

#7. Learn the literal meaning of the [Arabic] words; don't follow his explanations and interpretations. Only learn what God says. His words are divine messages, which you are free to interpret.

Malala Yousafzai

#8. I've lived the literal meaning of the "land of the free" and "home of the brave." It's not corny for me. I feel it in my heart. I feel it in my chest. Even at a ball game, when someone talks during the anthem or doesn't take off his hat, it pisses me off. I'm not one to be quiet about it, either.

Chris Kyle

#9. We ascribe value to him (the literal meaning of the word "worship") based not on who he is, but on what he can do for us.

Skye Jethani

#10. You never saw such a crazy cat. 'Up the wall' took on a literal meaning.

Arnold Hano

#11. The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.

Albert Camus

#12. Overly literal translations, far from being faithful, actually distort meaning by obscuring sense.

Ken Liu

#13. In his youth, he was electrified. The stars were moving in his bloodstream. He would not have been cowed by the customs of an earthly monarch. When he loved, it was with a heat and a desperation that he carried like a sword. He loved in the way that Greeks burned cities.

Brenna Yovanoff

#14. The saddle is a place for dreaming when there's hours of trail ahead ...

Louis L'Amour

#15. In fight, by 'knowing what to do next',
element of surprise can be overcomed.

Toba Beta

#16. Fanciful spiritualizing, so far from yielding God's meaning, actually obscured it. The literal sense is itself the spiritual sense, coming from God and leading to Him.

J.I. Packer

#17. You're such a left-brain AND a kleptomaniac. Quit taking things literally and there's hope for you yet!

Bryant A. Loney

#18. You are not your mistakes. Just because you have done something stupid does not make you stupid.

Maxwell Maltz

#19. Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Voltaire

#20. My great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes of reality, so that they may become, yes, untruth if you like - but more true than the literal truth.

Vincent Van Gogh

#21. 'Mysticism' here means, in the literal sense, a change of sensory impressions and organ sensations into something unreal and beyond this world.

Wilhelm Reich

#22. The best thing about my job is that I work with the best creative people in the business in their fields.

Geoff Johns

#23. All the moral laws are readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we have only to restore the primitive meaning of thewords by which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural philosophy.

Henry David Thoreau

#24. Swampy [ Marsh] and I live as far away from each other as we possibly can and still work together. But we just always felt like we were funnier when we were in the room together than we are when we're separate.

Dan Povenmire

#25. Rumors are spread by jealous people

Laurie Halse Anderson

#26. The "distant country" is the world in which everything considered holy at home is disregarded.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

#27. Life's opportunities never end. God designed you to be a continual learner, a continual doer, a continual explorer and a continual giver. He never authorized a 'retirement age' from those pursuits!

Paula White

#28. Looking at her, though, was like looking at the hills. The hills stayed as they were. You could go them, if you had the means, but they extended no greeting.

Larry McMurtry

#29. I don't like my shoes,' said Rose.
'I'm wearing my shoes and you don't see me complain.'
'You only hear a person complain,' said Rose. 'Not see.'
How has Rose lived for seventeen years and no one has killed her, not once?

Franny Billingsley

#30. There is a twofold meaning in every creature, a literal and a mystical, and the one is but the ground of the other.

John Smith

#31. I could stand before him, be in his arms as I was just then, and still be lost to him, some phantom of a desire he cherished more than he cherished me, the woman he claimed to love.

Alexander Chee

#32. What did the mat say to the door? You must be really aDOORable to open up to everyone who knock at you. And I welcome everyone and what do I get? People stepping all over me

Ana Claudia Antunes

#33. In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

David Byrne

#34. All faithful members of the Lord's Church are equally blessed by priesthood ordinances.

Julie B. Beck

#35. An aspect of the work has to do with altering the literal/cultural meaning of existing public images by making minimal changes and additions. Using superimposition, juxtaposition and other contextual changes, I am functioning as a visual guerrilla.

Robert Heinecken

#36. It's nice to meet you, Eve. I'm glad it's you and not that bratty ho-bag.

Lexi Blake

#37. Is a couple of hairs above my lip really worthy of this much effort?" I asked. "Yes," they both replied at once.

Jana Deleon

#38. I wasn't really naked. I simply didn't have any clothes on.

Josephine Baker

#39. A person who seems to have all of the answers, usually isn't listening.

Jeffrey Gitomer