quotations about words
Words are not necessary to one's experience of the true life.
DON DELILLO
Point Omega
I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
The beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound
The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
A good word costs as little as a bad one, and is worth more.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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
Words frequently surrender power to the opposer.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Fair words never hurt the tongue.
GEORGE CHAPMAN
Eastward Ho
If you can express yourself so as to be perfectly understood in ten words, never use a dozen.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Words are but the bannerets of a great army, a few bits of waving color here and there; thoughts are the main body of the footman that march unseen below.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world
DEPECHE MODE
"Enjoy the Silence"
Last words are only words.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Suttree
The word; the forth-speaking of a thought, an idea, a truth, is the beginning of every new creation, or pulse of creation. It is the inauguration of every new order of things; it begins every new messianic reign, every coming of a better time. The darkness never comprehends it; but always, to as many as receive it, it gives power.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
Essays and Sermons
When I was a girl my mother said
I chattered like a magpie
even in my sleep, as if I knew one day
the words would all be stopped,
wine corked up in a bottle.
MAGGIE BUTT
"I am the Sphinx"
Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.
GLEN DUNCAN
I, Lucifer
No man weighs his words who has but a moment to live.
PHILIP MOELLER
Helena's Husband
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
Today it is even more important to acknowledge that words should matter and are very important. That importance, however, stems from them being the only game in town. That is, they are, for most of us, the only tool we have to communicate. While this is true I must also say that today no one should worship words, because on close inspection they do not hold up to scrutiny.
DAVID BUCIENSKI
"How much do words really matter?", Southgate News Herald, March 9, 2017