quotations about words
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
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
Words are the light and sound of our existence, the heat lightning by which the night is illuminated.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
Always having to have the last word is a bad trait. Pisses people off.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
The Lunatic Cafe
Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
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
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
What happens to a country when a leader's words are worthless, when their promises are toothless or utterly useless?
BRIAN STELTER
"CNN Drops The Hammer On Trump And Tells America That The President's Words Are Worthless", PoliticusUSA, March 26, 2017
I must make a choice every time I speak a sentence in English. I try to choose the happier way of saying things, so that my own words will not weigh me down like stones.
TAD WILLIAMS
Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
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
One mild word ... will quench more heat than a bucket of water.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
There are times when people aren't able to acknowledge or interpret an action but words are definite.
ANGIE JURGENS
"The power of words, through the eyes of a writer", Journal Star, January 30, 2016
A man does not die for words. He dies for his relation to them.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
A Place To Come To
Words are soldiers of fortune
Hired by different ideas.
MAXWELL BODENHEIM
"Impulsive Dialogue"
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
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"
It is the stillest words that bring the storm.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
The beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
I hated the words. Each one was like a big live insect in my mouth.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
Truly speech has wonderful strength and power, that through a mere word, proceeding out of the mouth of a poor human creature, the devil, that so proud and powerful spirit, should be driven away, shamed and confounded.
MARTIN LUTHER
"Of God's Word", Table Talk