quotations about words
Words are soldiers of fortune
Hired by different ideas.
MAXWELL BODENHEIM
"Impulsive Dialogue"
How charming it is that there are words and sounds: are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things eternally separated?
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people derive from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
The same words
come from each mouth
differently.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Fifteen Pebbles"
The word; the forth-speaking of a thought, an idea, a truth, is the beginning of every new creation, or pulse of creation. It is the inauguration of every new order of things; it begins every new messianic reign, every coming of a better time. The darkness never comprehends it; but always, to as many as receive it, it gives power.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
Essays and Sermons
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
Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?
THOMAS MANN
Freud and the Future
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
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound
A word makes thy fortune sometimes.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
I sit and say nothing for fear
My words will turn to stone
And though they are sincere,
They will become a prison of their own.
GARRISON KEILLOR
Pilgrims
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
Twas a special gift of God that speech was given to mankind; for through the Word, and not by force, wisdom governs.
MARTIN LUTHER
"Of God's Word", Table Talk
I must make a choice every time I speak a sentence in English. I try to choose the happier way of saying things, so that my own words will not weigh me down like stones.
TAD WILLIAMS
Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
What happens to a country when a leader's words are worthless, when their promises are toothless or utterly useless?
BRIAN STELTER
"CNN Drops The Hammer On Trump And Tells America That The President's Words Are Worthless", PoliticusUSA, March 26, 2017
"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
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