quotations about words
Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"
Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.
THOMAS REID
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
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
First words are critical. Just ask any novelist or screenplay writer.
RICK BROWN
"The first words you need to hear", Your Houston News, January 13, 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
Words are sometimes signs of ideas; sometimes of the want of them.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Whether they are growls of anger, the laughter of happiness or cries of sadness, humans pay more attention when an emotion is expressed through vocalisations than we do when the same emotion is expressed in speech. It takes just one-tenth of a second for our brains to begin to recognise emotions conveyed by vocalisations, a study said. The researchers believe that the speed with which the brain 'tags' these vocalisations and the preference given to them compared to language, is due to the potentially crucial role that decoding vocal sounds has played in human survival.
EDITOR
"We are better at detecting laughter than words", Z News, January 19, 2016
Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.
DAN SIMMONS
Olympos
Last words are only words.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Suttree
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
CHARLES DICKENS
Bleak House
Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
Words once sequenced into phrases were never done with but recycled themselves in perpetuity.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
Flaubert's famous search for the "mot juste" was not a search for words that glow alone, but for words so precisely placed that in combination with other words, also precisely placed, they carve out a shape in space and time.
STANLEY FISH
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
A man does not die for words. He dies for his relation to them.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
A Place To Come To
It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach the other side -- just like I want the words. I want my words to build bridges strong enough to walk on. I want them to tower over the world so I can stand up on them and walk to the other side.
MARKUS ZUSAK
Getting the Girl
Always having to have the last word is a bad trait. Pisses people off.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
The Lunatic Cafe
In our world, words seem to flow in endless disharmony. Words are often misused in ways that do an injustice to truth. We are exposed to endless words in print, social media and everyday speaking that do not build a framework of goodness, honesty and truth. We experience words that alarm, serve people's own selfish needs, are untruthful, controlling, or seek to appeal in ways that do not speak the truth in love. When the power of self-interest replaces truth, we are headed in the direction of chaos.
LARRY ROREM
"Choosing our words truthfully", Juneau Empire, March 26, 2017
Words are words, and there are no cross-platform kinks to work out. But when it comes to emoji characters, things get a bit trickier.
JESSAMINE MOLLI & DANIEL HUBBARD
"Lost in Translation: How texting emojis between different devices can turn disastrous", Slate, February 10, 2016