WORDS QUOTES XIII

quotations about words


Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 27

Such simple words! But words are mighty things;
They cast us down, or lift us up to rest;
They charm and strengthen, till our angel sings
The last of all the life-songs, and the best.

SARAH DOUDNEY
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37

Some Words


Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 63

Tags: Sarah Doudney


With words, I could build a world I could live in. I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation.

MARY OLIVER

"Maria Shriver Interviews the Famously Private Poet Mary Oliver", O Magazine, March 2011

Tags: Mary Oliver


The act of saying that things exist that cannot be described in words shakes a universe where words are the supreme belief.

FRANK HERBERT

Heretics of Dune


What a pity it is that there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together; and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a ribbon ... or a husband.

JULIUS CHARLES HARE

Guesses at Truth

Tags: Julius Charles Hare


If words suffice not, blows must follow.

AESOP

"The Farmer and the Cranes", Aesop's Fables

Tags: Aesop


All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


I make words up. It started when I had small children. I did it to make them laugh. I did it to keep them entertained. I did it because it was fun. And I did it to make them think and come up with words of their own!

DREXEL GILBERT

"The top 5 words you should never say at work", New York Daily News, March 5, 2017


Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.

THOMAS HOBBES

Leviathan

Tags: Thomas Hobbes


And the words slide into the slots ordained by syntax, and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call meaning.

ANTHONY BURGESS

Enderby Outside


Certain individual words do possess more pitch, more radiance, more shazam! than others, but it's the way words are juxtaposed with other words in a phrase or sentence that can create magic. Perhaps literally. The word "grammar," like its sister word "glamour," is actually derived from an old Scottish word that meant "sorcery." When we were made to diagram sentences in high school, we were unwittingly being instructed in syntax sorcery, in wizardry. We were all enrolled at Hogwarts. Who knew?

TOM ROBBINS

interview, Reality Sandwich

Tags: Tom Robbins


Into the vortex of this sea of messaging comes not an afterthought but very possibly the cause, the universal values that are necessary for a world tied together by what? By words. Words are not dying now, merely moving forward. Books are not dying. "In the beginning was the word" suggests that very foundation of reality begins with how we see and express it.

STEPHEN C. ROSE

"Cybercommunities will require a revolution based on messaging", Blasting News, April 3, 2017


Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

The American Notebooks, 1848

Tags: Nathaniel Hawthorne


Wondrous depth of Thy words! whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth. O my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honor, and a trembling of love.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

Tags: St. Augustine


As a free people, we must respect those who speak honestly and forthrightly and be suspect of those who would torture the language, and otherwise misrepresent facts. Words are thoughts; protect them.

JONATHAN HOFFMAN

"Words are thoughts; protect them", Arizona Daily Star, March 11, 2017


Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk, speak to me Babel, that I may strive to assemble of all these syllables a single word before the purpose of speech is gone.

CONRAD AIKEN

"This Image or Another"

Tags: Conrad Aiken


The written word has this advantage, that it lasts and can await the time when it is allowed to take effect.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


The word was -- civilization!

THOMAS MANN

The Magic Mountain

Tags: Thomas Mann


The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

GEORGE ORWELL

The Lion and the Unicorn

Tags: George Orwell


The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

introduction, The Left Hand of Darkness

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


Too many words cheapened the value of a man's speech.

PATRICIA BRIGGS

Raven's Shadow

Tags: Patricia Briggs