quotations about words
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
He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
MARK TWAIN
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The words of God are deeds.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The empirical usability of the sacred ceremonial words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corporeal presence.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Jargon of Authenticity
Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"
It is the stillest words that bring the storm.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
In the increasingly convincing darkness
The words become palpable, like a fruit
That is too beautiful to eat.
JOHN ASHBERY
Houseboat Poems
In silence you can't hide anything ... as you can in words.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
The Ghost Sonata
I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
November
I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech on receiving the London Times Literary Award, November 2, 1949
What lives in words is what words were needed to learn.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"To Speech"
There have been countless nights now that I have sat at my computer staring at a blank screen, in hopes I could find some words to describe the feelings and thoughts that have been going through my head. Countless nights where I lay awake disappointed with the fact another night went by, and still I was stuck with nothing. I never really understood why kids in my classes over the years hated writing papers, but now I understand more than ever. Not being able to find the right words to describe the thoughts going through you head absolutely sucks.
SAM WAKITSCH
"I write because to me, words are beautiful", Chicago Now, January 25, 2016
Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
"Barrow and Newton", Dialogues of Literary Men
Words carry weight and have impact. Our generation's vocabulary is a significant part of our culture, and everyone contributes. Words have history and baggage that are too often ignored. Meanings of words change, often incredibly slowly, so using a word now can mean that you are implicitly using all of its past meanings. Using that word can take you back to its origin and render you a contributor to the degradation it was meant to cause.
GRACE JOHNSON
"Words and their weight", The Brown Daily Herald, January 27, 2016
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
ELIE WIESEL
attributed, The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom
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
Theirs, too, is the word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"Notes on an Elizabethan Play", The Common Reader
The words that bore the deathless verse of Homer from bard to a group of fascinated hearers, and with whose fading sounds the poems passed beyond recall, are fixed on the printed page in a hundred tongues. They carry to a million eyes what once could reach but a hundred ears.
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
lecture at Columbia University, March 4, 1908