quotations about words
Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"
Words have not the color of the rose
Nor the beauty of the morn!
EDWIN CURRAN
"The Depths of Love"
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
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
Last words are only words.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Suttree
Contrary to what some people have tried to imply, the meaning of a word can be, to a great extent, a subjective experience. After all, words are really just ideas. Those ideas are layered in experiences unique to each individual's perspective. That means that we may not be using our terms in the same exact manner as we might think others are. If that isn't bad enough, those unique ideas might, or might not be rooted in fact. These things should force us to reflect on the thought that perhaps even the few words we do use are not as well defined or universal as some would have us believe.
DAVID BUCIENSKI
"How much do words really matter?", Southgate News Herald, March 9, 2017
Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.
DAN SIMMONS
Olympos
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
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
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
Words are sometimes signs of ideas; sometimes of the want of them.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
CHARLES DICKENS
Bleak House
Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
If we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
Always having to have the last word is a bad trait. Pisses people off.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
The Lunatic Cafe
In silence you can't hide anything ... as you can in words.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
The Ghost Sonata
Concerning speech and words, the consideration of them hath produced the science of grammar. For man still striveth to reintegrate himself in those benedictions, from which by his fault he hath been deprived; and as he hath striven against the first general curse by the invention of all other arts, so hath he sought to come forth of the second general curse (which was the confusion of tongues) by the art of grammar.
FRANCIS BACON
The Advancement of Learning
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