Best Definition Quotes

Yes, this was his home. Here no harm could come to him. He smiled at the mere idea that any harm could come to him here. He avoided looking at the divan on which he slept. Every human creature needed a home, not a home of the kind understood by crude knock-you-down patriots, not a religion either, a mere insipid foretaste of a heavenly home: no, a real home, in which space, work, friends, recreation, and the scope of a man's ideas came together into an orderly whole, into - so to speak - a personal cosmos. The best definition of a home was a library. ~ Elias Canetti

The best definition that I heard of that is that a bureaucrat is a Democrat who has a job that a Republican wants. ~ Alben W. Barkley

Man is a creature who gets used to everything, and that, I think, is the best definition of him. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The best definition I can find of faith is the dependence upon the veracity of another. The Bible definition in the 11th chapter of Hebrews is, 'Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' In other words, faith says amen to everything that God says. Faith takes God without any ifs, If God says it, Faith says I believe it; Faith says amen to it. ~ Dwight L. Moody

People often compare
depression to drowning.

That is not even close.

Consider sitting in a dark room
scared and confused -
Choking on something you
know nothing about,
For reasons you cannot comprehend.

That is depression.

When you are drowning,
you can still flail your arms,
call for help, and try your best
to keep afloat.

In depression, you do nothing.
Absolutely nothing. ~ Akif Kichloo

I believe the best definition of man is the ungrateful biped. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The best definition I have ever heard of a vocation is that it's the place where your great joy meets the world's great need. We need all of you to find your vocation. To develop your joys, your passions, and to match them to the world's great needs. ~ Eric Greitens

The best definition of faith that I know is that it is reason grown courageous. Moreover, that is all that Christ ever asked us for, and the reason he asked us for that was because he wants to use us. He needs our help. It is almost impossible to believe it. But God Almighty wants our help, so Christ tells us. ~ Wilfred Grenfell

Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Intellectuals resist faith longer because they can: where ordinary people are helpless before the light, intellectuals are clever enough to spin webs of darkness around their minds and hide in them. That's why only Ph.D.s believe any of the 100 most absurd ideas in the world such as Absolute Relativism, or the Objective Truth of Subjectivism, of the Meaningfulness of Meaninglessness and the Meaninglessness of Meaning, which is the best definition of Deconstructionism I know. ~ Peter Kreeft

Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter. ~ Nadine Gordimer

Some people think humility is thinking lowly of yourself. Some people think it's not thinking about yourself. But, to me, the best definition of humility is radical self-awareness from a distance, seeing themselves from a distance and saying, what's my problem? ~ David Brooks

The archetype of the witch is long overdue for celebration. Daughters, mothers, queens, virgins, wives, et al. derive meaning from their relation to another person. Witches, on the other hand, have power on their own terms. They have agency. They create. They praise. They commune with nature/ Spirit/God/dess/Choose-your-own-semantics, freely, and free of any mediator. But most importantly: they make things happen. The best definition of magic I've been able to come up with is "symbolic action with intent" - "action" being the operative word. Witches are midwives to metamorphosis. They are magical women, and they, quite literally, change the world. ~ Pamela J. Grossman

A wise man once said that the best definition of insanity was performing the same action over and over again, expecting different results."
Father Peter stopped smiling. "The same could be said of you. What makes you so sure you're right? And so sure I'm wrong?"
"The difference is that I made a mistake once, out of ignorance," Tim said. "Everything I've done since then has been to try to make amends."
"To earn forgiveness."
"To protect the innocents." Tim smiled, "And yes, to earn forgiveness. ~ Robert J. Wiersema

My best definition of a nerd: someone who asks you to explain an aphorism ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Indeed, a quick glance around this broken world makes it painfully obvious that we don't need more arguments on behalf of God; we need more people who live as if they are in covenant with Unconditional Love, which is our best definition of God. (p. 21) ~ Robin R. Meyers

Unlock the door?' he asks.

This family is an experiment, the biggest I've ever been part of, an experiment called: How do you let someone in?

'Unlock the door,' he says again. 'Please.'

I release the lock. I open the door. That's the best definition of love. ~ Samantha Hunt

The best definition I've heard is that guilt is about what you've done, shame is about who you are. If something's out of my control, I don't feel shame about it, because what could I have done? If you're guilty, you can at least try to atone for it or make it better or not do it again. If it's who you are, you can't do much about it except change yourself, and that's pretty hard. ~ Mary Gaitskill

The best definition of profit I've ever heard is that it is the applause you get for satisfying your customers and creating a motivating environment for your people. ~ Kenneth H. Blanchard

The harmony of the part with the whole may be the best definition of health, beauty, truth, wisdom, morality, and happiness. This ~ Will Durant

You don't always get your dreams come to you in FULL DEFINITION. It usually comes in bits and pieces of the picture you've conceived in your mind; but it certainly comes. And when it comes, even blurry in LOW DEFINITION, and you recognize it, all you've got to do is make a little tweaks here and there and then you can fine tune it to the BEST DEFINITION.
You however, have to DREAM! ~ Ufuoma Apoki

Best definition of "investing" is "gambling with the odds in your favor." The people on the short side of the subprime mortgage market had gambled with the odds in their favor. The people on the other side - the entire financial system, essentially - had gambled with the odds against them. ~ Michael Lewis

Maybe that is the best definition of a work of genius: something that renders silly and futile any thought of an upgrade. ~ Éric Weiner

In search," Urs (Hölzle) believed, "the discussion was really, How can we outdistance our current system and make it look laughable? That's the best definition of success: if a new system comes out and everyone says, 'Wow, I can't believe we put up with that old thing because it was so primitive and limited compared to this. ~ Douglas Edwards

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker - yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday. ~ Jane Goodall

Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life ~ William Ellery Channing

Maybe the best definition of what a great partnership or great love is when people make each other grow in a better direction than they would have grown on their own. ~ Brit Marling

An admirable line of Pablo Neruda's, "My creatures are born of a long denial," seems to me the best definition of writing as a kind of exorcism, casting off invading creatures by projecting them into universal existence, keeping them on the other side of the bridge ... It may be exaggerating to say that all completely successful short stories, especially fantastic stories, are products of neurosis, nightmares or hallucination neutralized through objectification and translated to a medium outside the neurotic terrain. This polarization can be found in any memorable short story, as if the author, wanting to rid himself of his creature as soon and as absolutely as possible, exorcises it the only way he can: by writing it. ~ Julio Cortazar

The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class. ~ Louis Dudek

The line between gambling and investing is artificial and thin. The soundest investment has the defining trait of a bet (you losing all of your money in hopes of making a bit more), and the wildest speculation has the salient characteristic of an investment (you might get your money back with interest). Maybe the best definition of "investing" is "gambling with the odds in your favor. ~ Michael Lewis

Similarly, some of the more recent research on serial killers and child abuse demonstrates an analogous attention to definition and methodological precision. This is a highly positive development given the fact that child abuse has been cited as a developmental precursor to antisocial impulses and that these same impulses have been suggested to be precursors to both animal abuse and violence directed against humans. ~ Linda Merz-Perez

The Bible talks about your spirit being immortal, that you were created for existence beyond your physical body. Well, that's no different from Scientology! I don't think that because the word someone uses for spirit is thetan that the definition becomes any different. ~ Will Smith

Consider these differences: Self help depends on my efforts to get where I need to go, sanctification asks God to do what only He can, and then equips me to do what I can in response. Self help focuses on my definition on healthy, helpful, good and wise. Sanctification allows scripture to define the virtues I ought to pursue and display. Self help believes my life is my own, sanctification says that my life is God's and He determines my purpose and path. Self help asserts that knowing my worth and value gives my life meaning, but sanctification moves me to find my worth in what Jesus paid for me. Self help pursues good things, sanctification chases God things. Self help strives to make my life easier, sanctification is submitting to a life that may be harder, but better. Self help has me at the center, sanctification has God at the center. Self help's end game is my happiness, sanctification's goal is my holiness. ~ Whitney Capps

The vision of extraordinary achievement is,by definition, a few steps beyond consensus and conventional logic ~ Scott Belsky

Definition of 'Free': You pay for it whether or not you elect to receive it. ~ Aaron Allston

...any object functioning within the physical laws of any particular universe does not have free will ... In terms of human beings, all behavior and cognition cannot appear out of thin air. Behavior and cognition must be the result of prior causes. This is because our brains obey the same laws of a cause and effect physical universe just like any other physical object. All events that occur in the universe are caused by antecedent events.

Quantum indeterminacy, which maintains that the state of a system does not determine a unique collection of values for all its measurable properties, is not a valid argument for free will and has been used incorrectly to justify beliefs of independent decision-making. Logically speaking, notions of randomness and indeterminism are actually additional arguments against free will. All events that occur at random in the universe are, by definition, not caused by antecedent events. Or to say it a different way, any random event cannot also be a willed event.

By the process of elimination, events that are "willed freely" are events that are neither determined nor random. In other words, in all likelihood events that are "willed freely" are events that simply do not exist. ~ Mark J. Solomon

Armed attack has a definition in international law. It means sudden, overwhelming, instantaneous ongoing attack. ~ Noam Chomsky

In other words, our constitution was designed by people who were idealistic but not ideological. There's a big difference. You can have a philosophy that tends to be liberal or conservative but still be open to evidence, experience, and argument. That enables people with honest differences to find practical, principled compromise. On the other hand, fervent insistence on an ideology makes evidence, experience, and arguments irrelevant: If you possess the absolute truth, those who disagree are by definition wrong, and evidence of success or failure is irrelevant. There is nothing to learn from the experience of other countries. Respectful arguments are a waste of time. Compromise is weakness. And if your policies fail, you don't abandon them; instead, you double down, asserting that they would have worked if only they had been carried to their logical extreme. ~ Bill Clinton

The definition of a gentleman is a man who enters a revolving door in front of you and exits behind you. ~ Chloe Thurlow

It is of man's essence to create materially and morally, to fabricate things and to fabricate himself. Homo faber is the definition I propose ... Homo faber, Homo sapiens, I pay my respects to both, for they tend to merge. ~ Henri Bergson

The motive for a Christian marriage is, 'I really want to meet my husband or wife's needs. I want to be loving and kind to my spouse, and make sure that I am caring for, and meeting his or her needs.' However, kingdom marriage takes the definition of Christian marriage much further - - it's about 'how can the two of us stand side by side and discover why God has put us together and then actually fulfill His purposes. ~ Kevin Paterson

The Charcoal Sky

Sometimes you go to the wrong place, but the right way comes and finds you. It might make you trip over it or speak to it. Or it might come to you when a day is stripped apart by night and ask you to take its hand and forget this wrong place, this illusion where you stand.

I think of this mess in my mind and the girl who walked through it to stand before me and let her voice come close.

I remember brick walls.

There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.

It calls your name, but you're gone.
You hear nothing. See nothing.
You've gone somewhere else. You've gone somewhere to find a different definition of yourself, and it's a place where nothing else can touch you. Nothing else can swing on your thoughts. It's only yourself, flat against the charcoal sky, for one moment.

Then flat on the earth again, where the world doesn't recognize you anymore. Your name is what it always was. You look and sound like you always did, yet you're not the same, and when a city wind begins to call you, it's voice doesn't only hit the edges.

It connects.

It blows into you rather than in spite of you.

Sometimes you feel like it's calling out for you. ~ Markus Zusak

If you look up the definition of greatness in the dictionary, it will say Michael Jordan. ~ Elgin Baylor

The lady is proverbial for her skill in eluding definition ... she may be described merely as the female of the favored social class. ~ Emily James Smith Putnam

I suppose the word "unbearable" is a lie by definition. Unless you kill yourself immediately after using it. ~ Glen Duncan

One definition of living might be the perpetual swapping of story lines. We trade in the scripts we've written for ourselves and get our real lives in return. ~ Leslie Jamison

Science manipulates things and gives up living in them. It makes its own limited models of things; operating upon these indices or variables to effect whatever transformations are permitted by their definition, it comes face to face with the real world only at rare intervals. Science is and always will be that admirably active, ingenious, and bold way of thinking whose fundamental bias is to treat everything as though it were an object-in-general - as though it meant nothing to us and yet was predestined for our own use. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty

Not that any of the sysadmin's knowledge and skills were applicable here.
The psychological stance was the thing: the implicit faith, a little naive and a little cocky, that by banging his head against the problem for long enough he'd be able to break through in the end. ~ Neal Stephenson

I start off with the obvious, that it makes no sense either to believe or to disbelieve in God until a substantial and intelligent definition or concept should be offered. Belief or disbelief is a secondary consideration, contingent on the intelligibility and cogency of the premise; the primal unintelligence or irrationality of moderns is revealed by their eagerness to leap to a conclusion without ever being curious what the hell the original premise was. ~ Kenny Smith

Each lodge is an oasis if equality and good will in a desert of strife, working to wield mankind into a great league of sympathy and services, which, by the terms of our definition, it seeks to exhibit now on a small scale. ~ Joseph Fort Newton

A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians. ~ Henry Adams

You have an unusual definition of luck."
She stiffens. "Spoken like someone who lives in a castle with an endless supply of food and wine, but calls himself cursed. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

Though Christians are accused of holding bigoted and inhumane beliefs about sexuality, this is not true. Our view of sexuality is rooted not in fear or self-righteous prudery. It is rooted in our high view of human dignity as God's image-bearers. That's why we do not believe that sexuality defines humanity, nor do we believe humanity defines sexuality. Being human, and thus made in the likeness of God, is so noble a thing that God alone reserves the right to confer the definition of our true personhood. We do not say with Lady Gaga, "I'm beautiful in my way." We say, "I am beautiful in God's way." To the degree that we abandon God's way, we abandon our beauty. ~ Jon Bloom

She admired her passion, knowing that passion is by definition excessive. ~ Milan Kundera

With high definition TV, everything looks bigger and wider. Kind of like going to your 25th high school reunion. ~ Jay Leno

Normalcy...what a strange word. Its definition can be changed so completely by one phone call... ~ Diana Mankin Phelps

Going back is a nice way to give definition to each of the characters because they are so vastly different. I would never want them to get blended together. ~ Tatiana Maslany

No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this-'devoted and obedient.' This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman. ~ Florence Nightingale

the monetarists would have met with greater success if they had broadened their definition of money even further. Their mistake was to fail to see that there is no distinction between fiat money and credit. They should have included all dollar-denominated credit instruments in their definition of money. Or, put differently, they should have replaced money with credit in the equation of exchange, because by the 1980s there was less and less difference between the two. Now there is essentially none. ~ Richard Duncan

There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man. ~ Ernesto Che Guevara

There was nothing terrible about them. They had no particular power over me. No more than anyone else. It had never been them. It had always been me. This realization was like a word I had to be taught every time I heard it. The definition never seemed to sink in. They were just ordinary people. [ ... ] It used to matter so much. It used to seem like such a struggle to not turn into my father. But now, sitting here, it seemed impossible that that could've ever happened. I had wasted so much time on this. I kept finding out that the monster I'd been fighting was only me. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home. ~ Francois Hollande

To condescend effectively it is clearly necessary to adhere to a narrow definition of relevant data. ~ Marilynne Robinson

If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt. He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense. ~ C.S. Lewis

We must go out to Pure Life, Pure Truth, Pure Love, and that is the definition of God. He is the ultimate goal of life; from Him we came, and in Him alone do we find our peace. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it; enthusiasm signifies God in us. ~ Madame De Stael

There is sadness and then there is happiness. Happiness does not normally make its prescence felt. You have to go deep and feel the true happiness inside your own heart. Happiness can be our solitude, our loneliness, or a few good friends. You must find your happiness and protect your happiness! ~ Avijeet Das

If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it. ~ David Levithan

It's always difficult to define what jazz is or what jazz isn't. To me, the only definition that I can think of is it's music where a lot of different elements are played at the same time. The harmonic, the melodic ... You're pushing the boundaries on every level. That could be true of rhythm and blues as well. I'm a musician. ~ David Sanborn

(Part of the self-definition of Europe and the neo-European countries is that it, the First World, is where major calamities are history-making, transformative, while in poor, African or Asian countries they are part of a cycle, and therefore something like an aspect of nature.) Nor has AIDS become so publicized because, as some have suggested, in rich countries the illness first afflicted a group of people who were all men, almost all white, many of them educated, articulate, and knowledgeable about how to lobby and organize for public attention and resources devoted to the disease. AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them. What ~ Susan Sontag

Emotion it self is blindfold. So one second of your life control by emotion it's the definition of selfishness. ~ Abraham Ruiz

Hurt is a part of life. To be honest, I think hurt is a part of happiness, that our definition of happiness has gotten very narrow lately, very nervous, a little afraid of this brawling, fabulous, unpredictable world. ~ Julian Gough

There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ~ Henry A. Wallace

Being an adult doesn't mean you're suddenly stuffy and boring - it just means you're a little more responsible, a little more considerate. Well, that's my definition of what being an adult means. And I'm always right, so, ya know, that's what it is. ~ Lindy Zart

The idea of luxury, even the word "luxury," was important to Arabella. Luxury meant something that was by definition overpriced, but was so nice, so lovely, in itself that you did not mind, in fact was so lovely that the expensiveness became part of the point, part of the distinction between the people who could not afford a thing and the select few who not only could, but also understood the desirability of paying so much for it. Arabella knew that there were thoughtlessly rich people who could afford everything; she didn't see herself as one of them but instead as one of an elite who both knew what money meant and could afford the things they wanted; and the knowledge of what money meant gave the drama of high prices a special piquancy. She loved expensive things because she knew what their expensiveness meant. She had a complete understanding of the signifiers. ~ John Lanchester