WORDS QUOTES V

quotations about words

Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.

ROBERT ALTMAN

Esquire, March 2004

Tags: Robert Altman


Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Foundation and Empire

Tags: Isaac Asimov


Talk is never just words.

BERNARD BECKETT

Genesis

Tags: Bernard Beckett


When you doubt between two words, choose the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge: love simple ones, as you would native roses on your cheeks.

JULIUS CHARLES HARE

Guesses at Truth


I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.

LEWIS H. LAPHAM

Harper's Magazine, November 2010

Tags: Lewis H. Lapham


Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion

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I am spoken to not in words, which come to me quaint and veiled, but in signs, in conformations of face and hands, in postures of shoulders and feet, in nuances of tune and tone, in gaps and absences whose grammar has never been recorded.

J. M. COETZEE

In the Heart of the Country


Words which enlighten some darken others.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


A good word costs as little as a bad one, and is worth more.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Tags: Benjamin Whichcote


It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you're not quite there and you're redoing it and redoing it and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard.

ELIZABETH STROUT

Newsweek, July 13, 2009

Tags: Elizabeth Strout


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

Tags: Garrison Keillor


My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets -- no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!

PHILIP ROTH

Portnoy's Complaint

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Just pick words and put one of them after the other like a baby learning to walk, like a drunk carefully crossing the street.

WILLIAM GAY

Provinces of Night

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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

Tags: Laura Esquivel


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

Tags: Francis Bacon


By words the mind is winged.

ARISTOPHANES

The Birds

Tags: Aristophanes


In silence you can't hide anything ... as you can in words.

AUGUST STRINDBERG

The Ghost Sonata

Tags: August Strindberg


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


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


If we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place.

GEORGE ELIOT

The Mill on the Floss

Tags: George Eliot