I dig old books. ™
Est. 1998
 | ||
Home About Contact Terms Privacy |
Quotations about Words
Words, — so innocent and powerless as they, as standing in a dictionary; how potent for good and evil they become to one who knows how to combine them! ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
'Tis well said again;
And 'tis a kind of good deed to say well:
And yet words are no deeds.
~William Shakespeare, Henry VIII, 1612
Crystal ideas are often broken by the grapple with words. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897
If you can't explain something in a few words, try fewer. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
...words are slippery and tricky creatures, whether they drop from the tip of the tongue or of the pen, and when used in important matters, cannot be too carefully watched or too strongly manacled. ~Lelia J. Robinson, 1886
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous... ~Henry Adams, "The Grammar of Science (1903)," The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography, 1918
There's always something that you can't pin down with words. Words fall flat all the time — look at the word dust around you. ~
A "smartcracker" they called me... There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. ~Dorothy Parker, in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 1958, interviewed by Marion Capron, edited by Malcolm Cowley
"In good prose (says Schlegel) every word should be underlined!" that is, every word should be the right one; and then no one would be righter than another. There are no italics in Plato. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
But even these enjoy writing. Very certainly I do not. I like it worse every year. The older I grow the more sharply I mistrust words. So few of them have any meaning left. It is impossible to write one sentence in which every word has the bareness and hardness of bones, the reality of the skeleton. ~Storm Jameson, No Time Like the Present, 1933
Human language may be polite and powerless in itself, uplifted with difficulty into expression by the high thoughts it utters, or it may in itself become so saturated with warm life and delicious association that every sentence shall palpitate and thrill with the mere fascination of the syllables.... There may be phrases which shall be palaces to dwell in, treasure-houses to explore; a single word may be a window from which one may perceive all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. Oftentimes a word shall speak what accumulated volumes have labored in vain to utter: there may be years of crowded passion in a word, and half a life in a sentence. ~Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "Letter to a Young Contributor," The Atlantic Monthly, April 1862
The poet is a man of words. Words are his breath and his life. In them, and in them alone, is ease for his suffering and sublimation for his personal and vicarious pains. ~Dorothy Thompson, "Death of a Poet," 1939
Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them. Alas, in this world he sometimes, or perhaps too often, lives by catchwords. ~Adlai Stevenson
But ten years are a decade. And in a decade the ever moving kaleidoscope of American life "does things" to the language of the Americans. In ten years, new words have caught on, old words have been sloughed off. The activities of business, politics, society, athletics, drama and the professions have implanted and brought to full bloom a host of new nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs whose meanings clamor for attention. The meanings, too, that graced the forms of certain old favorites ten years ago have been irrevocably shed, along with the golf cape and starched shirt-waist of that period, and are now replaced by heaven-knows-what mysteries of be-bustled and slit-skirted verbiage. Such are the fearful and wonderful quick-changes of American vernacular! ~Charles Wayland Towne, The Altogether New Foolish Dictionary, by Gideon Wurdz, 1914
...Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still...
~T. S. Eliot
A wordsmith is a word worrier. He worries words and the positions of words. His aim is to worry meaning into a bell of sound that has the ring of truth. ~Dr. Idel Dreimer, lumpenbangenpiano.com
And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.
A noun is not the name of a thing but an attack on a thing: a noun tears a thing out of its environment, strips it of its defenses, and hales it into court for an indictment...
A pronoun is like the suit one gives a prisoner after he has been stripped of his identity.
A conjunction is the luxurious device of a jubilant reason which, no longer content to create another world, insists on finding its sovereign pleasure in the manipulation of its creatures.
The world of reason is poor compared to the world of sense — until or, but, if, because, when, and, unless populate it with endless possibilities.
Words are the works of art that make possible science.
Words are the abstractions that make possible poetry.
Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is.
With words man has been able to create a world, and it is fitting that the author of Genesis should have proposed that the world of sense experience, too, was created with words. ~Walter Kaufmann, "Words and Experience," Critique of Religion and Philosophy: or, How to Go to Hell: The Need for Negative Thinking, 1958
POLONIUS: ...What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET: Words, words, words.
~William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1600
We next went to the School of Languages, where three Professors sat in Consultation upon improving that of their own Country.
The first Project was to shorten Discourse, by cutting Polysyllables into one, and leaving out Verbs and Participles; because, in Reality, all Things imaginable are but Nouns.
The other Project was a Scheme for intirely abolishing all Words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great Advantage in Point of Health, as well as Brevity. For it is plain, that every Word we speak is, in some Degree, a Diminution of our Lungs by Corrosion; and consequently contributes to the Shortening of our Lives. ~Jonathan Swift, Lemuel Gulliver's Travels into several Remote Nations of the World, 1726, quoted from 1742 edition
A moth ate a word! To me it seemed
A marvelous thing when I learned the wonder
That a worm had swallowed, in darkness stolen,
The song of a man, his glorious sayings,
Thoughts of the mighty; and the thieving guest
Was no whit the wiser for the words it ate.
~"The Book-worm," an Old English riddle [a.k.a. "Book Moth"
It seems to me that the soul, when alone with itself, speaking to itself from time to time between two absolute silences, uses only a small number of words, none of them extraordinary. ~Paul Valéry, "Spiritual Canticles," translated by Denise Folliot
Vance... broke out, "what I really want is to write poetry. From the very first I've always felt inside of myself that for me it was that or nothing... Using words to tell stories with is like paving the kitchen-flood with diamonds. God! Words are too beautiful to be walked over in that way, with muddy feet... Words ought to be received at the door of the mind with lighted torches and incense and things — like one of the big church ceremonies..." ~Edith Wharton, The Gods Arrive, 1932
I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth... I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them. ~William Hazlitt, "On Familiar Style," 1821
Oh, words are action good enough, if they're the right words... If one is going to act, in words, one should go armed to the teeth, and fire carefully... ~D. H. Lawrence, 1924
...He was wont to
speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man
and a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his
words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many
strange dishes....
~William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, 1598
Along with everything else today, words are getting a terrible kicking around... Conversation is edging toward verbal shorthand. ~Leonard Louis Levinson, Webster's Unafraid Dictionary, 1967
The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them. ~Stephen King, "The Body," 1982, stephenking.com
Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words; and
words are grown so false, I am loath to prove
reason with them.
~William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, 1599
For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me. ~A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926
...new words reborn out of an old time... like new seeds from an old harvest... ~Thomas Merton
Didst thou but know the inly touch of love,
Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow
As seek to quench the fire of love with words.
~William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, c.1594 [II, 7, Julia]
Said the Idiot, "If ten commandments make a decalogue, one commandment makes a monologue, doesn't it?"
"You're a philologist and a half," said the Bibliomaniac, with a laugh.
"No credit to me. A ten years' residence in this boarding-house has resulted practically in my having enjoyed a diet of words. I have literally eaten
...to find out Words which will prove faithful witnesses of the peculiarities of my Thoughts... ~Henry More, An Explanation of The Grand Mystery of Godliness, 1660
Do not despair, being few. You possess the supreme science and the supreme force of the world: the Word. An order of words can be more murderous than a chemical formula. ~Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863–1938), Le Vergini delle Rocce, 1896, translated from the Italian, The Maidens of the Rocks
What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same. ~Antonio Porchia (1886–1968), Voces, 1943–1966, translated from the Spanish by W.S. Merwin (1927–2019), c.1968
Stinging whips, each syllable that crackles from our lips—
Words flung in anger as mighty pent up dynamite
Words cut by a madman's ax; words brittle with ice
Words pointed, barbed with sleet and torn of branch
Words that cascade, ricochet, split, and fall in avalanche
~Lew Sarett, "Words," Slow Smoke, 1925 [modified
QUOTATION, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would. ~George Eliot
So let the Turk of Cyprus us beguile;
We lose it not, so long as we can smile.
He bears the sentence well that nothing bears
But the free comfort which from thence he hears,
But he bears both the sentence and the sorrow
That, to pay grief, must of poor patience borrow.
These sentences, to sugar, or to gall,
Being strong on both sides, are equivocal:
But words are words; I never yet did hear
That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.
I humbly beseech you, proceed to the affairs of state.
~William Shakespeare, Othello, 1604
How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. ~Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, 1900
Sometimes the vague word is preferable to the accurate... Let not the word clasp the thought too closely... ~Joseph Joubert, translated by George H. Calvert
But words are finer tools; they give
A meaning, hid in form and hue;
In them a subtler truth may live
Than brush or pencil ever drew.
~Hannah R. Hudson, "Word-Painting," Poems, 1874 [alternatively published as "Poet and Painter"
...to create a perpetual feeling of enchantment by the constant but unobtrusive employment of the most beautiful and melodious words... a painter and musician in speech... ~Richard Garnett, April 1897, Introduction to The Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In order that words be poetical they should be warm with the fire of the soul, or moist with its breath. ~Joseph Joubert, translated by George H. Calvert
A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words. Some poems took years to find their words. ~Robert Frost
...poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~Paul Engle, "Poetry Is Ordinary Language Raised to the Nth Power," The New York Times, 1957
Literature is the art of using words. This is not a platitude, but a truth of the first importance, a truth so profound that many writers never get down to it... ~Arnold Bennett (1867–1931), How to Become an Author: A Practical Guide, 1903
So that he that uses many words for the explaining any Subject, doth like the Cuttle-Fish, hide himself for the most part in his own Ink. ~John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation, 1701
...men of few words are the best men... ~William Shakespeare
OBSOLETE, adj. No longer used by the timid. Said chiefly of words. A word which some lexicographer has marked obsolete is ever thereafter an object of dread and loathing to the fool writer, but if it is a good word and has no exact modern equivalent equally good, it is good enough for the good writer. Indeed, a writer's attitude toward "obsolete" words is as true a measure of his literary ability as anything except the character of his work. A dictionary of obsolete and obsolescent words would not only be singularly rich in strong and sweet parts of speech; it would add large possessions to the vocabulary of every competent writer who might not happen to be a competent reader. ~Ambrose Bierce
If I have ever had these gifts in any sort of living form they have been smothered out of existence a long time ago under a wilderness of words. Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality... To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot. ~Joseph Conrad, "Under Western Eyes," 1910
The world being thus put under the mind for verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it... He uses forms according to the life, and not according to the form. This is true science... By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary. The poets made all the words, and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson,
It is not pathetic passages that make us shed our best tears, but the miracle of a word in the right place. ~Jean Cocteau
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter — it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. ~Mark Twain, letter to George Bainton, 1888 ["Don't mistake vivacity for wit, thare iz about az mutch difference az there iz between lightning and a lightning bug." ~Josh Billings' Farmer's Allminax for January 1871
Words are rather the drossy part of poetry; imagination the life of it. ~Owen Felltham
You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. ~Joseph Conrad, A Personal Record, 1912
That morning he had freed the soil-bound slaves,
Who dig no land for tyrants but their graves!
Such is their cry — some watchword for the fight
Must vindicate the wrong, and warp the right;
Religion — Freedom — Vengeance — what you will,
A word's enough to raise Mankind to kill;
Some factious phrase by cunning caught and spread,
That Guilt may reign — and wolves and worms be fed!
~Lord Byron, "Lara," edited by E. H. Coleridge
It was a pity, he thought, he hadn't gone in for painting instead of writing — painting, or perhaps sculpture. Some palpable flesh-and-blood rendering of life, rather than the gray disintegration of words. He recalled the hours he had spent in New York, on the broken-hinged divan in the studio of the young woman sculptor, Rebecca Stram, watching her mauling her clay… "I tell you what it is: words are the last refuge of the impotent. Writing is... an infirmity, a palsy — that's what it is. The fellows who 'grab' life, as Goethe called it, are the conquerors who turn it into form and colour… Damn words; they're just the pots and pans of life, the pails and scrubbing-brushes. I wish I didn't have to think in words… I sometimes feel as if I had them in my veins instead of blood..." ~Edith Wharton, The Gods Arrive, 1932
Sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold;
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H., 1833
The second obstacle lies in words and other symbols which are laden with emotion. Although, indeed, words exist for the most part for the transmission of ideas, there are some which produce such violent disturbance in our feelings that the rôle they play in the transmission of ideas is lost in the background. ~Albert Einstein, 1933
Whenever ideas fail, men invent words. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
But words are things, and a small drop of ink
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;
'T is strange, the shortest letter which man uses,
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper — even a rag like this,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that 's his.
~Lord Byron, Don Juan
Poetry is art with words and art is poetry without words. ~Quoted in the Moralia of Plutarch as an "oft-repeated saying" [Loeb, 1927: "poetry is articulate painting, and painting is inarticulate poetry"
What are your Axioms, and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, words.... Be not the slave of Words... ~Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh, 1831
But because words pass away as soon as they strike upon the air, and last no longer than their sound, men have by means of letters formed signs of words. Thus the sounds of the voice are made visible to the eye, not of course as sounds, but by means of certain signs. It has been found impossible, however, to make those signs common to all nations owing to the sin of discord among men, which springs from every man trying to snatch the chief place for himself.
A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. ~Emily Dickinson, 1872
We are much at the mercy of words; they govern our thoughts more often than they obey them. ~John Middleton Murry, "Manners and Morality," Pencillings: Little Essays on Literature, 1923
"...I do not think it is an enviable situation to be the [best] among the learners of words."
My father gave me a sharp glance, and then said, "Did you leave college because you considered that they taught you only words?"
"Yes, sir; and because I wish to learn ideas."
"Some silly book has filled your head, Contarini, with these ridiculous notions about the respective importance of words and ideas. Few ideas are correct ones, and what are correct no one can ascertain; but with words we govern men."
This observation completely knocked up all my philosophy, and I was without an answer. ~Benjamin Disraeli, Contarini Fleming: A Psychological Romance, 1832, quoted from the 1853 edition
...abuse of Words, has been the great instrument of Sophistry and Chicanery — of party, faction and Division in Society... ~John Adams, 1819
I don't know how to express myself in words. What I feel is not translatable. I express myself better through silence. ~Clarice Lispector (1920–1977), A Breath of Life: Pulsations, written 1974–1977, published posthumously 1978, edited by Olga Borelli and Benjamin Moser, translated from the Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz, 2012
It is not always words that bring
New understanding deeply seen—
Sometimes it is the silences
That fall between...
~George Elliston, "Syllabus," 1926
The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark.
The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has great silence.
~Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds
Words, however, even in the common meaning, are not, when used by a mastermind, the mere dress of thought. Such a definition degrades them below their sphere, and misconceives their importance.... Take the most beautiful and sincere poetry, which has ever been written, and its charm is broken as soon as the words are disturbed or altered.... A Thought embodied and embrained in fit words, walks the earth a living being. No part of its body can be stricken from it, or injured, without disfiguring the beauty of its form or spoiling its grace of motion. ~E. P. Whipple, "Words," in The American Review: A Whig Journal of Politics, Literature, Art, and Science, February 1845
Well-chosen words are abridged sentences. ~Joseph Joubert, translated by George H. Calvert
Finding words of no avail, I next resorted to tears. ~Emily Dickinson, 1848
Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use. ~Samuel Butler
I conceive that words are like money, not the worse for being common, but that it is the stamp of custom alone that gives them circulation or value. ~William Hazlitt, "On Familiar Style," 1821
Etymology, true etymology, is good and useful. It is profitable for the grammarian, the poet, the orator, the historian, the philosopher. Words are shells. Open the shell, you will find the kernel which will delight you. ~Joseph Roux, translated from the French by Isabel F. Hapgood
The memory of an unkind word often outlasts the remembrance of many charitable acts. ~Thomas Clark Henley, A Handful of Paper Shavings, 1861
Sweet, cheerful words, coming from a kind heart, are worth more than gold and gems... ~Rosella Rice, "Deacon John Flint," in Arthur's Home Magazine, 1870
The Words of the Wisest and Wittiest Men
Like Thunder are echoed again and again.
~Arthur Guiterman, "Of Words," A Poet's Proverbs, 1924
By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours. ~Thomas Babington Macaulay
You will hardly believe the difference the use of one word rather than another will make until you begin to hunt for a word with just the right shade of meaning, just the right color for the picture you are painting with words. Have you thought that words have color? ~Laura Ingalls Wilder, speech, Mountain Grove Sorosis Club, 1936
For me words have color, form, character; they have faces, ports, manners, gesticulations; they have moods, humors, eccentricities; they have tints, tones, personalities... ~Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), letter, 1893
The gaze of nature, when thus awakened, dreams and pulls the poet after its dream. Words, too, can have an aura of their own. ~Walter Benjamin
Words become luminous when the finger of the poet touches them with his phosphorus. ~Joseph Joubert, translated by George H. Calvert
Life and language are alike sacred. Homicide and verbicide — that is, violent treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate meaning, which is its life — are alike forbidden. Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the same as man's laughter, which is the end of the other. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table
The best literary periods have always been those when authors weighed and counted their words. ~Joseph Joubert, translated by George H. Calvert
Words must be weighed and not counted. ~Yiddish proverb
It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson,
You cannot see in the world the work of the Poet's pen:
Yet the Poet is master of words, and words are masters of men.
~William Alllingham, Blackberries, 1890
We are slaves to words. Speak often enough of an unreal thing, and after a while it becomes real. For instance, we have used the word "nation" for centuries. There is, however, no such thing as a nation. All that really exists is the individuals that compose a nation. ~Frank Crane, 1920
Fifty million isms must be wrong. On the face of it, some of them must be! Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Naziism, Fascism, Collectivism, Nationalism, Internationalism, Totalitarianism — the words are not all in the dictionary, but they are in every newspaper that we pick up. Ideologies! Words! Faiths! Creeds!
For the sake of these words and what they represent, men wear black shirts or brown, put red ties around their necks, conspire in cafés and drawing rooms, quarrel with their friends, desert their parents, parade, shout, make camps, publish newspapers, proclaim that a new heaven and a new earth are at hand.
For the sake of these words, and what they represent, bombs fall... flags are pulled down. New ones go up. Thrones totter, parliaments dissolve, leaders emerge. Songs and slogans... Oh, say can you see? Oh, say, does the Star-Spangled Banner yet wave? Yes, but it's getting increasingly hard to see. It is lost in a fog of isms. ~Dorothy Thompson, Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and Its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States, 1938
Wise words and great seldom agree. ~English proverb
Quotation lovers love rare words. ~Willis Goth Regier, Quotology, 2010, nebraskapress.unl.edu
Verse, which disdains the Laws of History,
Speaks things not as they are but ought to be:
Whoever will in Poetry excel,
Must learn, and use his hidden secret well,
'Tis next to be observ'd, that Care is due,
And Sparingness in framing Words anew:
You shew your Mast'ry if you have the Knack
So to make use of what known Word you take,
To give't a newer Sense: If there be need
For some uncommon Matter to be said;
Pow'r of inventing Terms may be allow'd...
This the just Right of Poets ever was,
And will be still, to coin what Words they please,
Well fitted to the present Age and Place.
Words with the Leaves of Trees a semblance hold
In this respect, where every Year the old
Fall off, and new ones in their places grow:
Death is the Fate of all things here below:
Nature herself by Art has Changes felt...
~John Oldham (1653–1683), Horace: His Art of Poetry, Imitated in English
I love you more than words can wield the matter... ~William Shakespeare
I have but few Words to spare. If I had but Six left three of them should be spent in saying I love you... ~Francis Hopkinson, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1790
In the mouths of many men soft words are like roses that soldiers put into the muzzles of their muskets on holidays. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), "Drift Wood, A Collection of Essays: Table-Talk," Prose Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1857
Words are easy, like the wind... ~William Shakespeare
Words are both better and worse than thoughts; they express them, and add to them; they give them power for good or evil; they start them on an endless flight, for instruction and comfort and blessing, or for injury and sorrow and ruin. ~Tryon Edwards
When thoughts fail of words, they find imagination waiting at their elbow to teach a new language without words. ~Henry Stanley Haskins, "Imagination," Meditations in Wall Street, 1940
In this mystery of life there is no simple complete failure. We lapse but also we can resume. There is success in every life. It is as inevitable as defeat. Our essential success is a matter of more or less, and lies wholly in the way we respond to life. There is no Heaven for us anywhere, at any time; nevertheless there are many bright reflections and much amusing incident upon the surface of being, and there is loveliness and truth in its substance.
These are not mere words — because words can be defined by other words. But truth and loveliness are primary things.…
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them. ~John F. Kennedy, Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, 1963
A man in words and not in deeds,
Is like a Garden full of weeds.
~James Howell's Proverbs, 1660
Such histories as these do, in reality, very much resemble a newspaper, which consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not... ~Henry Fielding, 1749
The prior's simple and homely language came from the heart, entered the heart and was remembered, whereas Mathias spoke from his brain. The heart is simple and always the same, but the brain is complex and various; and therefore it was natural that Mathias should hold, as if in fee, a great store of verbal felicities, and that he should translate all shades of thought at once into words. ~George Moore, The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story, 1916
Do I rue a life wasted doing crosswords? Yes, but I do know the three-letter-word for regret. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
A picture's worth a thousand words? A library card's worth millions. ~Roy Blount Jr., as quoted by The New York Public Library, 2012, nypl.org, royblountjr.com
Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution. ~Barbara W. Tuchman, "History by the Ounce," 1965
When I feel inclined to read poetry, I take down my Dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
The word adventurer finds something to fascinate and enlighten him on every page. ~Louise Pound, Foreword to L. V. Berrey and M. Van den Bark, The American Thesaurus of Slang, 1947 edition
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
~Alexander Pope, "An Essay on Criticism," 1709
Words, like clothes, get old-fashioned, or mean and ridiculous, when they have been for some time laid aside. ~William Hazlitt, "On Familiar Style," 1821
How much names taken for Things, are apt to mislead the Understanding.... I think... that we should have a great many fewer Disputes in the World, if Words were taken for what they are, the signs of our Ideas only, and not for Things themselves. ~John Locke, "Of the Abuse of Words," An Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1690
All words are pegs to hang ideas on. ~Henry Ward Beecher
Then cheer thy spirit: for know, thou emperor,
I will enchant the old Andronicus
With words more sweet, and yet more dangerous,
Than baits to fish, or honey-stalks to sheep,
When as the one is wounded with the bait,
The other rotted with delicious feed.
~William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, 1593
Keep to your sounding generalities, your tinkling phrases, and all will be well. Swell out an unmeaning truism to a perfect tympany of style. A thought, a distinction is the rock on which all this brittle cargo of verbiage splits at once. Such writers have merely verbal imaginations, that retain nothing but words. Or their puny thoughts have
The words were living things to her. She sensed them bestriding the air and charging the room with strong colors. ~Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones, 1959
For modern man, the really blessed thing about Nature is its otherness... Nature is blessedly
Words are the greatest, the most momentous of all our inventions, and the specifically human realm is the realm of language. In the stifling universe of mediaeval thought, the given facts of nature were treated as the symbols of familiar notions. Words did not stand for things; things stood for
I write for beloved friends who can see color in words, can smell the perfume of syllables in blossom, can be shocked with the fine elfish electricity of words. ~Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), letter to B. H. Chamberlain
Each word is different, with a different shape, size, and color, perhaps with a picture attached, or a taste or touch or smell, or a tag on it that tells what kind of job it has to do as it floats or marches or hops along in parades called sentences... Notice how clusters of words change color like white light shining through a prism, or how mixtures of words combine in chords as tones do in music. ~Harry Behn (1898–1973), "Concerning Words," 1967
Her words evoked textures and echoes, the color of voices, the rhythm of footsteps. ~Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind, 2001, translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves, 2004
Because people cannot see the color of words, the tints of words, the secret ghostly motions of words:—
Because they cannot hear the whispering of words, the rustling of the procession of letters, the dream-flutes and dream-drums which are thinly and weirdly played by words:—
Because they cannot perceive the pouting of words, the frowning and fuming of words, the weeping, the raging and racketing and rioting of words:—
Because they are insensible to the phosphorescing of words, the fragrance of words, the noisomeness of words, the tenderness or hardness, the dryness or juiciness of words; the interchange of values in the gold, the silver, the brass, and the copper of words:—
Is that any reason why we should not try to make them hear, to make them see, to make them feel? ~Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), letter to B. H. Chamberlain
...a man must be a
A good word removes anger.
A friendly word that's kindly spoken is just as cheap as one that's cross, and it may brace some pilgrim broken, who finds this life a total loss. It doesn't cost a copper penny to say, "Good morning, how d'ye do?" And it may mean a lot to many, and set their faces smiling, too. The smiles we wear are inexpensive, yet keep the world in better shape; their influence is so extensive it can't be measured with a tape. The kind and friendly words we scatter, with love of mankind in our tones, may well survive the wreck of matter, the crash of dynasties and thrones. And so I greet my fellow mortals with leaded smiles of thirteen ems, and do as much, perhaps, with chortles, as rich men do with gold and gems. The plan is old; man inter-glacial no doubt was vaguely on its track, and learned that his expression facial helped things along, or set them back. And still we must be pleading, urging, along this line till time is done, that men may be from gloom emerging, to take their places in the sun. ~Walt Mason (1862–1939), "The Kind Word"
For attractive lips, speak words of kindness... ~Sam Levenson, In One Era and Out the Other, 1973
Kind words may be more than coronets, but they never seem quite so large as an increase in salary. ~"Poor Richard Junior's Philosophy," The Saturday Evening Post, 1903, George Horace Lorimer, editor
Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart:
The effect doth operate another way.
Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together.
My love with words and errors still she feeds;
But edifies another with her deeds.
~William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, 1601
I am, by calling, a dealer in words; and words are, of course, the most powerful drugs used by mankind. Not only do words infect, ergotise, narcotise, and paralyse, but they enter into and colour the minutest cells of the brain, very much as madder mixed with a stag's food at the Zoo colours the growth of the animal's antlers. Moreover, in the case of the human animal, that acquired tint, or taint, is transmissible. ~Rudyard Kipling, "Surgeons and the Soul," 1923
[T]here are all sorts of experiences that we can't really put a name to... The birth of a child, for one. Or the death of a parent. Falling in love. Words are like nets — we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder. Finding God is like that, too. If it's happened to you, you know what it feels like. But try to describe it to someone else — and language only takes you so far... ~Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart, 2008, jodipicoult.com
A single kind word keeps one warm for three winters. ~Chinese proverb
How long a time lies in one little word!
Four lagging winters and four wanton springs
End in a word: such is the breath of kings.
~William Shakespeare, Richard II, 1595
Never use a long word where a short one will do. Call a spade a spade, not a well-known oblong instrument of manual industry... ~Henry Alford, A Plea for The Queen's English, 1863
The words 'I am' are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you're claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you! ~A. L. Kitselman,
Individually and collectively, men have always been the victim of their own words... ~Aldous Huxley, "The Desert," Adonis and the Alphabet and Other Essays, 1956
Oh, what a little thing can turn
A heavy heart from sighs to song!
A smile can make the world less stern;
A word can cause the soul to burn
With glow of heaven, all night long!
~James Buckham, "The Lesser Ministries," c.1893
Words make a deeper scar than silence can ever heal. ~Libraries: A Monthly Review of Library Matters and Methods, 1929
My mind has thunderstorms,
That brood for heavy hours:
Until they rain me words;
My thoughts are drooping flowers
And sulking, silent birds.
Yet come, dark thunderstorms,
And brood your heavy hours;
For when you rain me words,
My thoughts are dancing flowers
And joyful singing birds.
~William H. Davies, "Thunderstorms," Foliage, 1913
But words are mere playthings,
Neat trim holiday things,
They cannot half say things,
Enough of my love...
~J. Ashley, "Rhyme Without Reason," c.1806
Words are the motes of thought, and nothing more.
Words are like sea-shells on the shore; they show
Where the mind ends, and not how far it has been.
~Philip James Bailey, Festus
The language of friendship is not words but meanings. ~Henry David Thoreau
Words are sometimes efficacious, but the best sermons have been preached by Example. ~"Poor Richard Junior's Philosophy," The Saturday Evening Post, 1909, George Horace Lorimer, editor
Then your words of abuse today may turn into a universally valid principle of denigration, for words are magical formulae. They leave fingermarks behind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye becomes the footprints of history. One ought to watch one's every word. ~Franz Kafka, quoted by Gustav Janouch, Conversations with Kafka
I wonder how many Americans are aware how deep the issue of book burning goes. This is a time when great passions are loose in the world... You don't have to like a book in order to let it stand on the shelves. When you burn books, however wrong and bad they may be, you are doing an indignity to every book... The crime of book purging is that it involves a rejection of the word. For the word is never absolute truth, but only man's frail and human effort to approach the truth. To reject the word is to reject the human search. ~Max Lerner, 1953
No free society should ever be afraid of words. ~Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book, 1995,
To kill words with fear,
It's a dreadful thing.
—Don't.
~Terri Guillemets, "Censorship: What the D!ck@%$?," 2017, blackout poetry created from Charles Dickens, "The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain," 1848
Fill thy mind with useful knowledge and thou shalt avoid empty words. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882
Words are empty, but the writing brush leaves traces. ~Chinese proverb
Here's a stay
That shakes the rotten carcass of old Death
Out of his rags! Here's a large mouth, indeed,
That spits forth death and mountains, rocks and seas,
Talks as familiarly of roaring lions
As maids of thirteen do of puppy-dogs!
What cannoneer begot this lusty blood?
He speaks plain cannon fire, and smoke and bounce;
He gives the bastinado with his tongue:
Our ears are cudgell'd; not a word of his
But buffets better than a fist of France:
Zounds! I was never so bethump'd with words
Since I first call'd my brother's father dad.
~William Shakespeare, King John, 1596
Word by word the big books are made. ~French proverb
Words of snow, which fell last year. ~German saying
A word before is worth two behind. ~English proverb
A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words. ~Edmund Burke, 1795
Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses. Poets are the policemen of language; they are always arresting those old reprobates the words. 'Tincture' is such an old fellow he ought to know better than to have hidden in a medicine bottle for so long. ~William Butler Yeats, 1889
Oh, a word is a gem, or a stone, or a song,
Or a flame, or a two-edged sword;
Or a rose in bloom, or a sweet perfume,
Or a drop of gall, is a word.
You may choose your word like a connoissuer,
And polish it up with art,
But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays,
Is the word that comes from the heart.
You may work on your word a thousand weeks,
But it will not glow like one
That all unsought, leaps forth white hot,
When the fountains of feeling run.
You may hammer away on the anvil of thought,
And fashion your word with care,
But unless you are stirred to the depths, that word
Shall die on the empty air.
For the word that comes from the brain alone,
Alone to the brain will speed;
But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays,
Oh! that is the word men heed.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "The Word"
Words that come from the heart enter the heart. ~Hebrew proverb
Royal sir,
Since the exile of Posthumus, most retired
Hath her life been; the cure whereof, my lord,
'Tis time must do. Beseech your majesty,
Forbear sharp speeches to her: she's a lady
So tender of rebukes that words are strokes
And strokes death to her.
~William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, 1609
These words are razors to my wounded heart. ~William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, 1593
My life is — in a word — words. ~Terri Guillemets, "Literary life," 1998
[L]anguage is now one of the primary facts of every human experience. It is the medium in which we live and move and have about fifty
The word is mightier than the sword. ~Ahiqar
It is an old saying, A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword: and many men are as much galled with a calumny, a scurrilous and bitter jest, a libel, a pasquil, satire, apologue, epigram, stage-play or the like, as with any misfortune whatsoever. ~Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621 ["Leviter volant, graviter vulnerant." Bernardus.
But, as an English writer has wittily remarked, the man who first flung a word of abuse at his enemy instead of a spear was the founder of civilization. ~Sigmund Freud, c.1893, translated from German by James Strachey [quoteinvestigator.com]
Words are as beacons to lighten the darkness of our ignorance, but too many of us have been blinded with an excess of light; the excess is ours. Words are a solvent of clotted prejudice, but too many of us have made of them a reinforcement of the insensate atavism of inherited opinions. We have allowed too many of the beacons to become wreckers' lights; too many of them to become self-important and arrogantly autonomous. Especially during a war. ~Eric Partridge, "Words in Vogue: Words of Power," 1943
O, but they say the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony:
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
He that no more must say is listen'd more
Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;
More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before:
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past:
Though Richard my life's counsel would not hear,
My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear.
~William Shakespeare
Thou speakest, but thy words
Are as the air: I feel them not. Oh, lift
Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul!
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
the poet is a sensitive snail —
wandering along the path of life
leaving a glittering trail of words
~Terri Guillemets
There are three qualities in a simple word, which the orator may employ to illustrate and adorn his language: he may choose an unusual word, or one that is new, or metaphorical. Unusual words are generally of ancient date and fashion, and such as have been long out of use in daily conversation; these are allowed more freely to poetical license than to ours. A poetical word gives occasionally dignity and an air of greater grandeur to oratory. New words may be formed or invented by the speaker. Metaphors are a type of borrowing, and bring some accession of splendor to language.
Words and feathers are tossed by the wind. ~English proverb
You're all mad for words. Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books. Give me things! ~Robertson Davies
A man may break a word with you, sir, and words are but wind,
Ay, and break it in your face, so he break it not behind.
~William Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors, c.1589 [III, 1, Dromio of Ephesus]
Oaths are but words, and words but wind... ~Samuel Butler
WORD Something you must keep after giving it to another. ~Charles Wayland Towne, The Foolish Dictionary, Executed by Gideon Wurdz, Master of Pholly, Doctor of Loquacious Lunacy, etc., 1904
What she heard
I cannot tell; nor could she ever tell
In words; because all human words are vain...
~Henry Van Dyke, "Vera"
The way creatures contact one another can change. Let me try and explain what I am getting at in that. How does a dog contact its fellows? Touch, not very accurate achromatic sight, rich abundant smell, sex as a transient storm; what else is there that reaches from dog to dog? Our contacts are fuller than that. And they are becoming subtler and more abundant. Ages ago man began to elaborate life by using definite words. Also he began to clothe and elaborate love. He became more companionable. By words especially. Lovers talk and weave a thousand fancies. Words become the mechanism of a vast abundance of suggestion and enrichment. We smell each other's minds in conversation. And man's eyes also become more exact. We see with a new precision and discover beauty. We harmonize. We recede a little from the elementary contacts in order to achieve other and wider and lovelier ones. We are reluctant to recede from those elementary contacts, because of the extravagant expectations with which they allure us, but we must. We love the mind that speaks to us in music, we find beauty in pictures, we respond to the wisdom or to the caress in a poem. We love the woman Leonardo loved and writers who were bodily dead centuries ago live on to stir us. Our contacts stretch out more and more beyond the here and the now.
The greatest words are always solitaires,
Set singly in one syllable; like birth,
Life, love, hope, peace. I sing the worth
Of that dear word toward which the whole world fares—
I sing of home...
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Home"
All mighty words are short. God, life, death,
War, peace, and truth, are uttered in a breath.
And briefly said are love, and will, and time;
Yet in them lies a majesty sublime.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Love, Time, and Will"
Words are good, but fowls lay eggs. ~German proverb
Turning now to the more emotional aspects of modern thought, we shall not be surprised to find a veritable orgy of verbomania. ~C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richard, "The Power of Words," The Meaning of Meaning, 1923 [quoting Eugenio Rignano, as translated by Winifred A. Holl, 1923: "it is precisely in mysticism, where the concepts are most confused and fluctuating, that we find a veritable orgy of symbolism, verbal as well as graphic"
...thy words are madness... ~William Shakespeare
I do not know what I feel. The more deeply and intensely I feel, the less I know what I feel. If I have words for it, adequate words, the feeling is not deep and intense; if I have no words for it, I myself do not know what I feel. ~Walter Kaufmann, "Language and Emotion," Critique of Religion and Philosophy, 1958
If I could but entice you with sentences and tongue tie you with words. ~Jamie Lynn Morris
The refined scholar sustains himself on the finest aged wines of poetry but should take time occasionally to partake of
"What Fruits," the Speaker jeered, "can Science show?"
And Science brought his Words by Radio.
~Arthur Guiterman, "Of Self-Esteem," A Poet's Proverbs, 1924
Television, like all new arts, when they are new, is having to work its passage to respectability... The cultists of radio held that there was a purity in their medium absent in television. Nor is their claim foolish: radio drama was, and remains, unlike anything else; the wireless liberated poets and writers to an imaginative articulation which does not quite resemble, yet can sometimes give rise to, literature... The radio listener is provoked to a fruitful participation, as a good reader is... One need but cite the early plays of Harold Pinter, who seemed to write in a dark script of "negative meaning" which lurked in the silences between his lines. Words, isolated in the velvet of radio, took on a jewelled particularity. Television has quite the opposite effect: words are drowned in the visual soup in which they are obliged to be served. ~Frederic Raphael, "The Language of Television," in The State of the Language, edited by Leonard Michaels and Christopher Ricks, 1980
Words have long tails. ~English proverb
Poets yawn at business,
balk at politics, and believe
words the only currency.
~Terri Guillemets
Amaz'd he stands, nor Voice nor Body stirs;
Words had no passage, Tears no issue found,
For Sorrow shut up Words, Wrath kept in Tears;
Confus'd Effects each other do confound;
Opprest with Grief, his Passions had no bound.
Striving to tell his Woes, Words would not come;
For light Cares speak, when mighty Griefs are dumb.
~Samuel Daniel (c.1562–1619), The Complaint of Rosamond, 1592, quoted from a 1718 edition
...funeral grief loathes words. ~Thomas Dekker
Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief... ~William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, c.1594 [V, 2, Biron]
Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not yet learned to stifle with words. ~Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind, 2001, translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves, 2004
Merciful heaven!
What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows;
Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth, c.1605 [IV, 3, Malcolm]
The most indispensable gift for every American preacher is a mastery of the English tongue. His words should be clear as crystal and his sentences should shed light. His paragraphs should cut like swords and flash like torches. The sermon should be free from opaque and clouded phrases, and should abound in "words which the heart knows." His language must be the language of the conscience and the heart. His style must be pedestrian. It must fit down close around the skin of things. Deep thought and big words do not necessarily go together. The great words are nearly all short words, God and man, heaven and home, wife and child, life and love, faith and hope, joy and grief, pain and death, all these and a hundred like them drop easily from the tongue. The words which lovers know and which mothers speak in soothing and instructing little children, and which fathers whisper in the chamber of death and sob beside the grave, and which all men use in carrying on the life and business of the world, are all simple words, and these are the words which should be most frequent on the preacher's lips. These words are stained through and through with the heart experiences of many generations. They carry with them a light and fragrance which fill all the room in which they are spoken. And, a preacher's style should be full of color and music, fresh and rich — Love must always say the same things, but it never repeats itself. ~Charles Edward Jefferson, "Thy Speech Bewrayeth Thee," Quiet Hints to Growing Preachers in My Study, 1901 [a little altered
Some translators turn an author's words from stone to gold, others from gold to stone. ~Terri Guillemets
...Women know
The way to rear up children, (to be just,)
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words...
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, 1856
...he sang words without sense, but their tone went to his heart... ~Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography, translated from German by Charles T. Brooks, 1865
...Perhaps the breath of music
May prove more eloquent than my poor words:
It is the medicine of the breaking heart.
~Aubrey de Vere Hunt, Julian the Apostate, 1822
But the singer has everything within him. The notes come out from his very life. They are not materials gathered from outside... In music the heart reveals itself immediately... As the material of expression even words are barriers, for their meaning has to be construed by thought. But music never has to depend upon any obvious meaning; it expresses what no words can ever express... ~Rabindranath Tagore, "The Realisation of Beauty," Sādhanā, 1913
I felt that these pictures had something to say to me that was very important for me to know, but I could not tell what it was.... They gave me an emotion that I could not analyse. They said something that words were powerless to utter. I fancy that Strickland saw vaguely some spiritual meaning in material things that was so strange that he could only suggest it with halting symbols. It was as though he found in the chaos of the universe a new pattern, and were attempting clumsily, with anguish of soul, to set it down. I saw a tormented spirit striving for the release of expression. ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919
I love that... girl. I'd give my life for her, but I'd endanger my immortal soul for a beef stew. Hunger is a horrible thing... Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!
Giant shafts of trees, such shafts as one sees only in the stupendous forest of the far West, shot straight into the sky. We were up before the dawn. So titanic was the forest. The trails led us up and up, under spruce boughs becoming fragrant, over needle-strewn floors still heavy with darkness, disclosing glimpses now and then of gray light showing eastward between the boles. Suddenly the forest stopped, and we found ourselves on the crest of a great ridge, floating on a sea of darkness. Scarcely had we spoken in the miles of our ascent, and now words would be sacrilege. The gray light grew into white. Wrinkles and features grew into the mountain. Gradually a ruddy light appeared in the east. Then a flash of red shot out of the horizon, struck on a point of the summit, and caught from crag to crag and snow to snow until the great mass was streaked and splashed with fire. Slowly the darkness settled away from its base; a tree emerged; a bird chirped; and the morning was born! Far hills rose first through rolling billows of mist. Then came wide forests of spruce. As the panorama rose, the mountain changed from red to gold. Then the forest rang with calls of birds and a hundred joyous noises, and the creation was complete! ~Liberty Hyde Bailey, "The Realm of the Commonplace," The Outlook to Nature, 1905 [Sunrise on Mt. Shasta. A little altered.
Home About Contact Terms Privacy | ||
|
published 1999 Feb 15
revised Mar 2000, May 2025
last saved 2025 May 27
www.quotegarden.com/words.html