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
Words are powerful, especially when they become actions.
PETE WILSON
"Words are powerful, especially when they become actions", Brazil Times, March 5, 2017
Words are so last year.
BEANO
Twitter post, March 31, 2017
Words are sometimes signs of ideas; sometimes of the want of them.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
Words carried weight, some more than others, and it seemed to him that once you'd arranged them into phrases they stayed that way like bricks you'd laid in a wall and went on meaning what they said no matter what happened.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
Words have not the color of the rose
Nor the beauty of the morn!
EDWIN CURRAN
"The Depths of Love"
Words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.
DAN SIMMONS
Olympos
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
I believe words have power. Words can build up your self-esteem or words can puff up your pride. Words can deceive you into wrong thinking or words can guide you to safety. Words can move you to compassion. Words can even heal. Your own words can defeat you since our mental self-talk is the software directing our life.
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
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
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach the other side -- just like I want the words. I want my words to build bridges strong enough to walk on. I want them to tower over the world so I can stand up on them and walk to the other side.
MARKUS ZUSAK
Getting the Girl
Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"
My method is to find a word with a gesture.
CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN
An Evolution in Aphorisms
Not content with the million or so words they already have at their disposal, English speakers are adding new ones at the rate of around 1,000 a year. Recent dictionary debutants include blog, grok, crowdfunding, hackathon, airball, e-marketing, sudoku, twerk and Brexit.
ANDY BODLE
"How new words are born", The Guardian, February 4, 2016
Talk is never just words.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune