Definition of Literally

Literally

According to the primary and natural import of words; not figuratively; as, a man and his wife can not be literally one flesh.

With close adherence to words; word by word.

Related Definitions:

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Literally Quotations

With our technology, with objects, literally three people in a garage can blow away what 200 people at Microsoft can do. Literally can blow it away. Corporate America has a need that is so huge and can save them so much money, or make them so much money, or cost them so much money if they miss it, that they are going to fuel the object revolution.
Steve Jobs

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.
Tony Robbins

Transformation literally means going beyond your form.
Wayne Dyer

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.
Thomas A. Edison

It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.
Napoleon Hill

The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.
Richard Dawkins

Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.'
Paul McCartney

Tim Robbins had real confidence in college. He literally stole actors from the theater department at UCLA to be in his plays. The department heads got so mad at him.
Daphne Zuniga

When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I'm interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without.
Ansel Adams

Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.
Mel Brooks

A man is literally what he thinks.
James Allen

I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.
Henri Matisse

Anybody could say anything they want about me, and it literally never penetrates my skin.
Ron White

Nothing prevents us from being and remaining the exponents of a united humanity, when we have a country of our own. To fulfill this mission we do not have to remain literally planted among the nations who hate and despise us.
Theodor Herzl

No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.
Antonin Artaud

You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. It should make of you an incurable optimist. It is the open door.
Robert Collier

On reaching the place where the Indians had surprised us, we found the bodies of the three men whom they had killed and scalped, and literally cut into pieces.
Buffalo Bill

That's the trouble with being me. At this point, nobody gives a damn what my problem is. I could literally have a tumor on the side of my head and they'd be like, 'Yeah, big deal. I'd eat a tumor every morning for the kinda money you're pulling down.'
Jim Carrey

Some nights it was a melee, literally, where I'd be standing trying to defend myself for what I was doing. People would be screaming at me to do my old act, and getting actually violent and angry at me.
Jim Carrey

Sometimes I've gotten photographs back and people have literally shaven off pieces of me, and I tell them to put it back.
Alicia Keys

The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
Audre Lorde

Shooting this one was kind of like a two month party, we would literally play music between takes, and other movies that were shooting on our lot would play hookey, come over and hang out and stuff. We had a great time.
Mike Myers

Well, for the My Generation album, there was nothing to be nervous about in them days. We used to take every day as it came. Every day was just a gig and I think we did the recording between gigs literally.
Roger Daltrey

All you could do was to see them. We were backstage when the Beatles were on and you could just about hear a noise. It was just literally screaming.
Roger Daltrey

All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed quite literally to wound other boys, and sometimes very severely.
Roald Dahl

Mozart wrote so many works in his thirty-five years that it would take a lifetime just to write out the notes. We literally do not know how he did it.
Lukas Foss

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.
Annie Leibovitz

Japan is quite weird because they wait for you to say something before they respond. You can literally hear a pin drop, they don't make a sound until you say something to the crowd.
Kelly Jones

An allegory is not meant to be taken literally. There is a great lack of comprehension on the part of some readers.
Naguib Mahfouz

Hermione is so close to who I am as a person that I've never really had to research a role. I'm literally rediscovering what it means to be an actress.
Emma Watson

More Literally Quotations

Literally Translations

literally in French is textuelle
literally in Spanish is literalmente
literally in Swedish is bokstavligen, formligen

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