Lexicography Quotes

“When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, or clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation.”
― Samuel Johnson, Dictionary Of The English Language

“Words hurt, because they are one of the only socially accepted ways we can attack each other”
― Kory Stamper, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries

“I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are sons of heaven.”
― Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary