WORDS QUOTES VIII

quotations about words

Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


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


With words, we can negotiate deals. With words, we can enter into the covenant of marriage. With words, we can declare war. Words reveal our intent and purpose.

RON WOOD

"Words are weapons", Meridian Star, January 23, 2016


I sit and say nothing for fear
My words will turn to stone
And though they are sincere,
They will become a prison of their own.

GARRISON KEILLOR

Pilgrims

Tags: Garrison Keillor


Theirs, too, is the word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Notes on an Elizabethan Play", The Common Reader


As long as words a different sense will bear,
And each may be his own interpreter,
Our airy faith will no foundation find;
The word's a weathercock for every wind.

JOHN DRYDEN

The Hind and the Panther

Tags: John Dryden


I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Beyond Good and Evil

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion


Words come reluctantly to me, they clatter in my mouth and tumble out heavily like stones.

J. M. COETZEE

In the Heart of the Country

Tags: J. M. Coetzee


In our world, words seem to flow in endless disharmony. Words are often misused in ways that do an injustice to truth. We are exposed to endless words in print, social media and everyday speaking that do not build a framework of goodness, honesty and truth. We experience words that alarm, serve people's own selfish needs, are untruthful, controlling, or seek to appeal in ways that do not speak the truth in love. When the power of self-interest replaces truth, we are headed in the direction of chaos.

LARRY ROREM

"Choosing our words truthfully", Juneau Empire, March 26, 2017


The pressed oil of words can blaze up into music, into image, into the heart and mind's knowledge. The lit and shadowed places within us can be warmed.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

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Words carry weight and have impact. Our generation's vocabulary is a significant part of our culture, and everyone contributes. Words have history and baggage that are too often ignored. Meanings of words change, often incredibly slowly, so using a word now can mean that you are implicitly using all of its past meanings. Using that word can take you back to its origin and render you a contributor to the degradation it was meant to cause.

GRACE JOHNSON

"Words and their weight", The Brown Daily Herald, January 27, 2016


Always having to have the last word is a bad trait. Pisses people off.

LAURELL K. HAMILTON

The Lunatic Cafe

Tags: Laurell K. Hamilton


Our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people derive from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them.

MARCEL PROUST

Within a Budding Grove

Tags: Marcel Proust


The words that bore the deathless verse of Homer from bard to a group of fascinated hearers, and with whose fading sounds the poems passed beyond recall, are fixed on the printed page in a hundred tongues. They carry to a million eyes what once could reach but a hundred ears.

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER

lecture at Columbia University, March 4, 1908

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My method is to find a word with a gesture.

CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN

An Evolution in Aphorisms

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The poet cannot invent new words every time, of course. He uses the words of the tribe. But the handling of the word, the accent, a new articulation, renew them.

EUGENE IONESCO

Present Past / Past Present

Tags: Eugene Ionesco


God's linguistic being is the word. All human language is only reflection of the word in name. Name is no closer to the word than knowledge to creation. The infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytical in nature in comparison to the absolutely unlimited and creative infinity of the divine word.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Reflections

Tags: Walter Benjamin


I hated the words. Each one was like a big live insect in my mouth.

GLEN DUNCAN

Talulla Rising

Tags: Glen Duncan


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

DAN SIMMONS

The Rise of Endymion