quotations about words
If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
Words have not the color of the rose
Nor the beauty of the morn!
EDWIN CURRAN
"The Depths of Love"
A good word costs as little as a bad one, and is worth more.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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
Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
I am increasingly afflicted by vertigo where words mean nothing.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Words [are] more beautiful than a found fall leaf.
WILLIAM H. GASS
A Temple of Texts
Behind every word a whole world is hidden that must be imagined. Actually, every word has a great burden of memories, not only just of one person but of all mankind. Take a word such as bread, or war; take a word such as chair, or bed or Heaven. Behind every word is a whole world. I'm afraid that most people use words as something to throw away without sensing the burden that lies in a word.
HEINRICH BÖLL
The Paris Review, spring 1983
Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...
ANNE CARSON
Nox
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!
Words were too clumsy, sometimes; treacherous, too, always trying to twist around and mean something slightly different.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
By words the mind is winged.
ARISTOPHANES
The Birds
After all is said and done, more is said than done.
AESOP
Aesop's Fables
There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.
THOMAS REID
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
A laxity pervades the popular use of words.
CHARLES LAMB
"Table-Talk and Fragments of Criticism", The Life and Works of Charles Lamb
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
Not content with the million or so words they already have at their disposal, English speakers are adding new ones at the rate of around 1,000 a year. Recent dictionary debutants include blog, grok, crowdfunding, hackathon, airball, e-marketing, sudoku, twerk and Brexit.
ANDY BODLE
"How new words are born", The Guardian, February 4, 2016
Words come in many varieties. They show actions and feelings; they demonstrate obtuse or abstract ideas or they express concrete notions. Often we divide words into simple words, everyday language, and complicated or complex words, and words that should express subtleties. Often we use words not to be clear but to obfuscate our intentions and hide our real meanings. These are the words that at first sound wonderful but upon examining, we come to realize that they are veils hiding truth and vehicles of confusion.
PETER TARLOW
"What words can really mean in life", The Eagle, February 6, 2016