WORDS QUOTES IV

quotations about words

He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Tags: John Locke


One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO

Death with Interruptions

Tags: José Saramago


When you doubt between two words, choose the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge: love simple ones, as you would native roses on your cheeks.

JULIUS CHARLES HARE

Guesses at Truth


Desires and words go hand in hand ... they are moved by the same intention to join together, to communicate, to establish bridges between people, whether they are spoken or written.

LAURA ESQUIVEL

Swift as Desire

Tags: Laura Esquivel


Of what use are good words to an evil heart?

LOUIS BECKE

"Solepa", By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore and Other Stories

Tags: Louis Becke


Words are powerful. They have the ability to build someone up or tear him down. And that someone includes you too. The words you say to yourself can either motivate you toward your goals, seriously hinder or stall your progress, or prevent you from even starting on your journey.

RACHEL GRICE

"7 Words to Stop Saying Right Now", Yahoo Health, January 24, 2016


As the bud a leaf, so at last the thought becomes a word.

RICHARD GARNETT

De Flagello Myrtes

Tags: Richard Garnett


First words are critical. Just ask any novelist or screenplay writer.

RICK BROWN

"The first words you need to hear", Your Houston News, January 13, 2016


What so wild as words are?

ROBERT BROWNING

A Woman's Last Word

Tags: Robert Browning


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

Tags: Gustave Flaubert


Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Jargon of Authenticity


There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.

THOMAS REID

Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man

Tags: Thomas Reid


I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

The Sound and the Fury

Tags: William Faulkner


Words carried weight, some more than others, and it seemed to him that once you'd arranged them into phrases they stayed that way like bricks you'd laid in a wall and went on meaning what they said no matter what happened.

WILLIAM GAY

Provinces of Night

Tags: William Gay


I was struck by the way in which meanings are historically attached to words: it is so accidental, so remote, so twisted. A word is like a schoolgirl's room--a complete mess--so the great thing is to make out a way of seeing it all as ordered, as right, as inferred and following.

WILLIAM H. GASS

The Paris Review, summer 1977


All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

We

Tags: Yevgeny Zamyatin


Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.

ALEXANDER POPE

An Essay on Criticism

Tags: Alexander Pope


Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world

DEPECHE MODE

"Enjoy the Silence"


Words are not necessary to one's experience of the true life.

DON DELILLO

Point Omega


Words which enlighten some darken others.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims