quotations about words
One mild word ... will quench more heat than a bucket of water.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
The words of God are deeds.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.
MAYA ANGELOU
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Written, spoken or read I've always been amazed how one or two words could encourage someone to keep going. Or a devastating sentence could painfully break a person's heart. Even a simple written phrase could change someone's life forever.
HEIDI ALLEN
"Words Are Powerful -- My Journey With Words", Huffington Post, March 14, 2017
Word -- that invisible dagger.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
No man weighs his words who has but a moment to live.
PHILIP MOELLER
Helena's Husband
Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation and Empire
Words are never "only words"; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
"Barrow and Newton", Dialogues of Literary Men
The words we speak have such power, and we have the power to choose them wisely.
BARBARA WALSH
"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016
Of what use are good words to an evil heart?
LOUIS BECKE
"Solepa", By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore and Other Stories
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
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
After all is said and done, more is said than done.
AESOP
Aesop's Fables
There are some things for which three words are three too many, and three thousand words that many words too less.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
What so wild as words are?
ROBERT BROWNING
A Woman's Last Word
When I was a girl my mother said
I chattered like a magpie
even in my sleep, as if I knew one day
the words would all be stopped,
wine corked up in a bottle.
MAGGIE BUTT
"I am the Sphinx"
Deeds not Words: I say so too!
And yet I find it somehow true,
A word may help a man in need,
To nobler act and braver deed.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"Facta non Verba"
Make friends with words. You can't give words a pat on the back, nor can you shake hands with words. But like an old friend, words can fill you with a nostalgia that's indescribably sweet.
SHUJI TERAYAMA
attributed, "VOX POPULI: Words are like friends that bring comfort and meaning to life", Vox Populi, January 27, 2016