WORDS QUOTES VII

quotations about words


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Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.

ARTHUR SYMONS
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"Variations Upon Love"


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Tags: Arthur Symons


In silence you can't hide anything ... as you can in words.

AUGUST STRINDBERG

The Ghost Sonata

Tags: August Strindberg


Last words are only words.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Suttree

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

November

Tags: Gustave Flaubert


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

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

We

Tags: Yevgeny Zamyatin


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


Words were too clumsy, sometimes; treacherous, too, always trying to twist around and mean something slightly different.

K. J. PARKER

Evil for Evil


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

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Jargon of Authenticity


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 are so last year.

BEANO

Twitter post, March 31, 2017


Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

Philosophical Investigations

Tags: Ludwig Wittgenstein


Words are the light and sound of our existence, the heat lightning by which the night is illuminated.

DAN SIMMONS

The Rise of Endymion


Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.

DAN SIMMONS

Olympos

Tags: Dan Simmons


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

Tags: Anne Carson


It is the stillest words that bring the storm.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Thus Spoke Zarathustra


Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Words Fail Me", BBC Radio, April 29, 1937

Tags: Virginia Woolf


Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

JAMES JOYCE

"The Dead", Dubliners

Tags: James Joyce


My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets -- no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!

PHILIP ROTH

Portnoy's Complaint

Tags: Philip Roth


Concerning speech and words, the consideration of them hath produced the science of grammar. For man still striveth to reintegrate himself in those benedictions, from which by his fault he hath been deprived; and as he hath striven against the first general curse by the invention of all other arts, so hath he sought to come forth of the second general curse (which was the confusion of tongues) by the art of grammar.

FRANCIS BACON

The Advancement of Learning

Tags: Francis Bacon


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

DEPECHE MODE

"Enjoy the Silence"