quotations about words
The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to J. H. Tiffany, March 31, 1819
Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.
JOHNNY CARSON
The Tonight Show
I like good strong words that mean something.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Confusion of Feelings or Confusion
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
T. S. ELIOT
Ash-Wednesday
Talking always gets in the way of a good honest conversation.
GREG VOVOS
The Blogger
What a pity it is that there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together; and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a ribbon ... or a husband.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.
PABLO NERUDA
"So That You Will Hear Me"
Such simple words! But words are mighty things;
They cast us down, or lift us up to rest;
They charm and strengthen, till our angel sings
The last of all the life-songs, and the best.
SARAH DOUDNEY
Some Words
Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.
VOLTAIRE
Dialogue
Our words are always formative ... what we think and constantly affirm becomes our reality.
BARBARA WALSH
"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016
Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Philosophy
You will hear words
old and spent and useless
like costumes left over
from yesterday's parties.
CESARE PAVESE
"The Cats Will Know"
All words are pegs to hang ideas on.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Our sense that words are static things sitting in the dictionary with a meaning -- or even meanings -- that sit still is artificial. Rather, a word is a process, always on its way to becoming a different one.
JOHN H. MCWHORTER
"Not so lost in translation: How are words related?", The Christian Science Monitor, February 3, 2016
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
Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
The Olive Tree
With words, I could build a world I could live in. I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation.
MARY OLIVER
"Maria Shriver Interviews the Famously Private Poet Mary Oliver", O Magazine, March 2011
Of course, not everything is unsayable in words, only the living truth.
EUGENE IONESCO
Fragments of a Journal