quotations about words
A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.
EDMUND BURKE
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letter to Richard Burke
Weigh words, don't count 'em.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
As a free people, we must respect those who speak honestly and forthrightly and be suspect of those who would torture the language, and otherwise misrepresent facts. Words are thoughts; protect them.
JONATHAN HOFFMAN
"Words are thoughts; protect them", Arizona Daily Star, March 11, 2017
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
GEORGE ORWELL
The Lion and the Unicorn
The proof of words are sometimes the effect of them on others; words are not proofs without effect.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Word and picture are correlatives which are continually in quest of each other, as is sufficiently evident in the case of metaphors and similes. So from all time what was said or sung inwardly to the ear had to be presented equally to the eye. And so in childish days we see word and picture in continual balance; in the book of the law and in the way of salvation, in the Bible and in the spelling-book. When something was spoken which could not be pictured, and something pictured which could not be spoken, all went well; but mistakes were often made, and a word was used instead of a picture; and thence arose those monsters of symbolical mysticism, which are doubly an evil.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Too many words cheapened the value of a man's speech.
PATRICIA BRIGGS
Raven's Shadow
Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The American Notebooks, 1848
We allow words to obscure the interpretation of the deeper meaning.
STEPHEN YOUNG
preface, Micro Messaging: Why Great Leadership is Beyond Words
To reason with poorly chosen words is like using a pair of scales with inaccurate weights.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
You take many words to say simple things.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Autumn Garden
A writer ... whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation.
JOHN DOS PASSOS
introduction, Three Soldiers
You will hear words
old and spent and useless
like costumes left over
from yesterday's parties.
CESARE PAVESE
"The Cats Will Know"
The word was -- civilization!
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
You can stroke people with words.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Notebooks
The words fell as the axe of a skillful woodman falls at the root of a young tree and brings it down at a single blow.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
There was a magic in the words. I suppose their power lay in their utter futility.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.
MARKUS ZUSAK
The Book Thief
So powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us.
GENE WOLFE
The Shadow of the Torturer
It seems that slang words are generated much more quickly in the Internet era, with memes pushing all sorts of words out into the world for quick consumption and even quicker disappearance. After a short space of time, these words are quickly replaced by a new wave of memes, and the cycle begins once again. But while I'm glad that slang words like "on fleek" and "bae" are slowly tapering out, I hope that phrases like "throwing shade" and "yas queen" stick around until I'm old and gray, so I can say them to children without sounding like an outdated relic. Because, you know, those are my priorities.
MEHAK ANWAR
"5 Slang Words That Will Never Go Out Of Style, Because It's Always Been Cool To Say 'Cool'", Bustle, February 10, 2016