WORDS QUOTES VIII

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

Tags: Winston Churchill


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


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


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

Tags: Tad Williams


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


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


Language is a symbolic resource and words are rarely neutral. Given the many possibilities for using language to define, trivialise or make people and groups invisible, it should come as no surprise that linguistic intervention as one way to help build more inclusive societies has a long history.

LIA LITOSSELITI

"Use gender-sensitive language or lose marks, university students told", The Guardian, April 2, 2017


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


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"

Tags: Emily Dickinson


Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.

DORIS LESSING

The Golden Notebook

Tags: Doris Lessing


The beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.

THOMAS MANN

The Magic Mountain

Tags: Thomas Mann


The empirical usability of the sacred ceremonial words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corporeal presence.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Jargon of Authenticity

Tags: Theodor W. Adorno


If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


The same words
come from each mouth
differently.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

"Fifteen Pebbles"


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

GLEN DUNCAN

Talulla Rising

Tags: Glen Duncan


It is the stillest words that bring the storm.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Thus Spoke Zarathustra


A word makes thy fortune sometimes.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims

Tags: Edward Counsel


Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.

AESCHYLUS

Prometheus Bound

Tags: Aeschylus


Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementary sense of implying its absence -- by naming a thing, we treat it as absent, as dead, although it is still present -- but above all in the sense of its radical dissection: the word "quarters" the thing, it tears it out of the embedment in its concrete context, it treats its component parts as entities with an autonomous existence: we speak about color, form, shape, etc., as if they possessed self-sufficient being.

SLAVOJ ZIZEK

Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out

Tags: Slavoj Zizek


Make friends with words. You can't give words a pat on the back, nor can you shake hands with words. But like an old friend, words can fill you with a nostalgia that's indescribably sweet.

SHUJI TERAYAMA

attributed, "VOX POPULI: Words are like friends that bring comfort and meaning to life", Vox Populi, January 27, 2016