WORDS QUOTES XI

quotations about words

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


A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

MARK TWAIN

"Essay on William Dean Howells"

Tags: Mark Twain


You wait for nothing
if not for the word
that will burst from the deep
like a fruit among branches.

CESARE PAVESE

"Earth and Death"

Tags: Cesare Pavese


A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

Culture and Value

Tags: Ludwig Wittgenstein


All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

letter, April 9, 1945

Tags: Ernest Hemingway


Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.

SIGMUND FREUD

attributed, The Educator's Book of Quotes

Tags: Sigmund Freud


Words are naught but wind, and the fairest promises like dreams that take flight with the morning.

ÉDOUARD RENÉ DE LABOULAYE

Abdallah

Tags: Édouard René de Laboulaye


The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.

JACK LONDON

The Star Rover

Tags: Jack London


Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.

VOLTAIRE

Dialogue

Tags: Voltaire


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

Tags: George Orwell


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


When you write you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a woodcarver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it and it digs a path you follow.

ANNIE DILLARD

The Writing Life


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

Tags: Nathaniel Hawthorne


The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

The Art of Writing

Tags: André Maurois


A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.

STEFAN ZWEIG

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion

Tags: Stefan Zweig


The sharpest sword is a word spoken in wrath.

GAUTAMA BUDDHA

The Gospel of Buddha

Tags: Buddha


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

Tags: John Adams


Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

GEORGE ELIOT

The Spanish Gypsy


Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

EDWARD HIRSCH

How to Read a Poem

Tags: Edward Hirsch


Our words are such powerful tools, tools that shape divine ideas into reality.

BARBARA WALSH

"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016