“Life is our dictionary.”
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes

Quoted in: Cliffe Knechtle (1986) Give Me an Answer, p. 70

Una parola o forma di dire non è buona perchè è nel Vocabulario, ma è nel Vocabulario perchè era buona anche prima di esservi.
XIX.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 434.
Paradossi

“In the dictionary of Satyagraha, there is no enemy.”
Non-Violence in Peace and War (1948); also in Gandhi on Non-violence: Selected Texts from Mohandas K. Gandhi's Non-Violence in Peace and War (1965) edited by Thomas Merton
1940s
“Facts are not science — as the dictionary is not literature.”
Fischerisms (1944)

“LEXICOGRAPHER — A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.”
A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)