Wit, Wisdom, AND Vocabulary from Those We Lost in 2015

As the year ends, it is important to take a look back. Here are eleven of the most interesting quotes from those who have passed away this year. Some of the quotes are funny, some are wise, and all are hopefully thought-provoking in addition to containing interesting vocabulary. The people who said or wrote these things may be gone, but their words live on.
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. shard
    a broken piece of a brittle artifact
    I'm touched by the idea that when we do things that are useful and helpful - collecting these shards of spirituality - that we may be helping to bring about a healing
    —Leonard Nimoy
  2. blatantly
    in a completely obvious manner
    I have a motto that if something isn’t blatantly impossible, there must be a way of doing it.
    —Sir Nicholas Winton, a man who saved 669 children from the Holocaust and found them homes
  3. inalienable
    incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another
    ...the powers of survival, of the will to survive, and to survive as a unique inalienable individual, are absolutely, the strongest in our being: stronger than any impulses, stronger than disease.
    ― The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
  4. egregious
    conspicuously and outrageously bad or reprehensible
    I have heard my fill of hurtful words. I think it's especially egregious when citizens like me, who point out abuses in their country, are referred to as 'do-gooders.' This is how a phrase that can be used to stop an argument dead becomes part of common usage.
    — Günter Grass, Der Spiegel Interview August 20, 2010
  5. refuge
    something or someone turned to for assistance or security
    “My library was -- all libraries are -- a place of ultimate refuge, a wild and sacred space where meanings are manageable precisely because they aren't binding; and where illusion is comfortingly real. To read, to think, to trace words back to their origins real or presumed; to invent; to dare to imagine.
    ― The Rights of Desire by Andre Brink
  6. hamper
    prevent the progress or free movement of
    His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few.
    ― Maskerade by Terry Prachett
  7. mettle
    the courage to carry on
    How do we tell them that one not be discouraged by the imperfection of the world and the inevitability of death and diminishment. How do we tell them... that God permits pain and sickness and unfairness and evil to exist, only in order to permit us to test our mettle and to earn a fulfillment that would otherwise not be possible?
    —Mario Cuomo
  8. ambidextrous
    equally skillful with each hand
    I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
    —Yogi Berra
  9. cohesion
    the state of sticking together
    I'm not talking about falsifying, about lying, for heaven’s sake. I’m simply talking about making a pattern [...] offering a cohesion to that random catalogue of deliberate acheivement and sheer accident that constitute your life. And that cohesion will be a narrative that people will read and be satisfied by.
    — from Making History, a play by Brian Friel
  10. savor
    derive or receive pleasure from
    Savor life, don't press too hard, don't worry too much, enjoy.
    — Jerry Weintraub, Hollywood producer
  11. rigid
    incapable of or resistant to bending
    Try to open up your mind a little, and move away from rigid opinions of what people should do and be - unless you have been there.
    — Ann Rule, author
Created on Wed Dec 30 09:45:47 EST 2015 (updated Wed Dec 30 13:28:58 EST 2015)

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