WORDS QUOTES V

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 which enlighten some darken others.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Thoughts on Art and Life

Tags: Leonardo da Vinci


Last words are only words.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Suttree

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

speech on receiving the London Times Literary Award, November 2, 1949

Tags: Winston Churchill


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


Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion

Tags: Dan Simmons


It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you're not quite there and you're redoing it and redoing it and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard.

ELIZABETH STROUT

Newsweek, July 13, 2009

Tags: Elizabeth Strout


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


Talk is never just words.

BERNARD BECKETT

Genesis

Tags: Bernard Beckett


Whether they are growls of anger, the laughter of happiness or cries of sadness, humans pay more attention when an emotion is expressed through vocalisations than we do when the same emotion is expressed in speech. It takes just one-tenth of a second for our brains to begin to recognise emotions conveyed by vocalisations, a study said. The researchers believe that the speed with which the brain 'tags' these vocalisations and the preference given to them compared to language, is due to the potentially crucial role that decoding vocal sounds has played in human survival.

EDITOR

"We are better at detecting laughter than words", Z News, January 19, 2016


Kind words don't wear out the tongue.

DANISH PROVERB


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


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 am spoken to not in words, which come to me quaint and veiled, but in signs, in conformations of face and hands, in postures of shoulders and feet, in nuances of tune and tone, in gaps and absences whose grammar has never been recorded.

J. M. COETZEE

In the Heart of the Country


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


It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach the other side -- just like I want the words. I want my words to build bridges strong enough to walk on. I want them to tower over the world so I can stand up on them and walk to the other side.

MARKUS ZUSAK

Getting the Girl

Tags: Markus Zusak


The proof of battle is action, proof of words, debate.

HOMER

The Iliad

Tags: Homer


Words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


A good word costs as little as a bad one, and is worth more.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Tags: Benjamin Whichcote