quotations about words
Words ... are little houses, each with its cellar and garret.
GASTON BACHELARD
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The Poetics of Space
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
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
Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
Words are coded and loaded with underlying meanings until they're too heavy to use in casual conversation.
ISABEL DRUKKER
"Sticks and stones", Campus Times, April 2, 2017
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"
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
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." The adage is true as long as you don't really believe the words. But if your whole upbringing, and everything you have ever been told by parents, teachers and priests, has led you to believe, really believe, utterly and completely, that sinners burn in hell (or some other obnoxious article of doctrine such as that a woman is the property of her husband), it is entirely plausible that words could have a more long-lasting and damaging effect than deeds.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.
GLEN DUNCAN
I, Lucifer
Oaths are but words, and words but wind.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
If our words are kept under control, it shows that we have a lot of other things where they should be.
R. D. HOTTLE
"Anchor On ... Great Words of Life", Highland County Press, April 1, 2017
Actions speak louder than words, because as much as I hate to admit it, words don't have to mean anything if you don't want them to. Lying is easy.
ISABEL DRUKKER
"Sticks and stones", Campus Times, April 2, 2017
The pressed oil of words can blaze up into music, into image, into the heart and mind's knowledge. The lit and shadowed places within us can be warmed.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
Fair words never hurt the tongue.
GEORGE CHAPMAN
Eastward Ho
I write because words are beautiful when used correctly to describe thoughts and feelings. I write because when a topic or thought is important, the words just pour right onto the page as if that is where they were supposed to be.
SAM WAKITSCH
"I write because to me, words are beautiful", Chicago Now, January 25, 2016
It by no means follows, that because two men utter the same words, they have precisely the same idea which they mean to express: language is inadequate to the variety of ideas which are conceived by different minds, and which, could they be expressed, would produce a new variety of characteristic differences between man and man.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
When you come to rely on the written word, it's time to light the fire with it.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
All our words from loose using have lost their edge.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Death in the Afternoon
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm
DEPECHE MODE
"Enjoy the Silence"
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
letter, April 9, 1945