quotations about words
Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of reach of common understanding--symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
The Art of Writing
Everyday your words are revealing what is in your heart. Think of it as "Soulchat."
DAN DELZELL
"Your Words Reveal Your Heart", Christian Post, April 1, 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"
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to J. H. Tiffany, March 31, 1819
Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Cave
The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.
JACK LONDON
The Star Rover
A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Confusion of Feelings or Confusion
Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full.
HORACE
Ars Poetica
Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.
EDWARD HIRSCH
How to Read a Poem
I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.
PABLO NERUDA
"So That You Will Hear Me"
A definition is nothing else but an explication of the meaning of a word, by words whose meaning is already known. Hence it is evident that every word cannot be defined; for the definition must consist of words; and there could be no definition, if there were not words previously understood without definition.
THOMAS REID
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
Our words are such powerful tools, tools that shape divine ideas into reality.
BARBARA WALSH
"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016
Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
letter to Kirill Nabokov, c. 1930
The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"After Long Silence"
Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an essential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Philosophy
Throughout the years my writing has taken on many styles. Whether it was to discover myself, de-clutter my mind, get over heartache or decipher the lessons I was supposed to learn. Good or bad, words have always been there for me.
HEIDI ALLEN
"Words Are Powerful -- My Journey With Words", Huffington Post, March 14, 2017