quotations about words
Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.
FRANK HERBERT
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37
God Emperor of Dune
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
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
Words are sometimes signs of ideas; sometimes of the want of them.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Of what use are good words to an evil heart?
LOUIS BECKE
"Solepa", By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore and Other Stories
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
CHARLES DICKENS
Bleak House
What so wild as words are?
ROBERT BROWNING
A Woman's Last Word
Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
EMILY DICKINSON
"A Word is Dead"
Kind words don't wear out the tongue.
DANISH PROVERB
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
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
You can attach connotations or anything you want to a word, but, at the end of the day, it still means the same thing.
RUTH MWANGOMO
"Words' gray area: Reappropriation", The Shorthorn, March 29, 2017
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
The beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
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
Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.
DAN SIMMONS
Olympos
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
You must assume that your words are going to be repeated, misunderstood, or exaggerated by the person you "shared" with.
DREXEL GILBERT
"The top 5 words you should never say at work", New York Daily News, March 5, 2017
No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.
ROGER ZELAZNY
Lord of Light