quotations about words
Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
Words are acoustical signs for concepts; concepts, however, are more or less definite image signs for often recurring and associated sensations, for groups of sensations. To understand one another, it is not enough that one use the same words; one also has to use the same words for the same species of inner experiences; in the end one has to have one's experiences in common.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
Though I do keep lists of words that catch my attention for a variety of reasons, they rarely make it into poems, not infrequently because I lose the lists.
WALTER BARGEN
"An Interview with Walter Bargen", BkMk Press
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
CHARLES DICKENS
Bleak House
Words are powerful, especially when they become actions.
PETE WILSON
"Words are powerful, especially when they become actions", Brazil Times, March 5, 2017
Of what use are good words to an evil heart?
LOUIS BECKE
"Solepa", By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore and Other Stories
The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
As the bud a leaf, so at last the thought becomes a word.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
Words are sometimes signs of ideas; sometimes of the want of them.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.
ROBERT ALTMAN
Esquire, March 2004
There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.
THOMAS REID
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
The way that words mutate reminds me of fashions in music. The word--the note--is a constant. But the setting and chord in which it occurs alters with the mood of a nation from major to minor, from the assertive to the mournful and foreboding.
NEAL ASCHERSON
"Chords of Identity in a Minor Key", Games with Shadows
Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Harper's Magazine, November 2010
No man weighs his words who has but a moment to live.
PHILIP MOELLER
Helena's Husband
Word -- that invisible dagger.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
Flaubert's famous search for the "mot juste" was not a search for words that glow alone, but for words so precisely placed that in combination with other words, also precisely placed, they carve out a shape in space and time.
STANLEY FISH
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Jargon of Authenticity
There are times when people aren't able to acknowledge or interpret an action but words are definite.
ANGIE JURGENS
"The power of words, through the eyes of a writer", Journal Star, January 30, 2016