quotations about words
The proof of battle is action, proof of words, debate.
HOMER
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The Iliad
I love and reverence the Word, the bearer of the spirit, the tool and gleaming ploughshare of progress.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
Behind every word a whole world is hidden that must be imagined. Actually, every word has a great burden of memories, not only just of one person but of all mankind. Take a word such as bread, or war; take a word such as chair, or bed or Heaven. Behind every word is a whole world. I'm afraid that most people use words as something to throw away without sensing the burden that lies in a word.
HEINRICH BÖLL
The Paris Review, spring 1983
You can attach connotations or anything you want to a word, but, at the end of the day, it still means the same thing.
RUTH MWANGOMO
"Words' gray area: Reappropriation", The Shorthorn, March 29, 2017
Words are powerful. They have the ability to build someone up or tear him down. And that someone includes you too. The words you say to yourself can either motivate you toward your goals, seriously hinder or stall your progress, or prevent you from even starting on your journey.
RACHEL GRICE
"7 Words to Stop Saying Right Now", Yahoo Health, January 24, 2016
Words can only hurt you if you try to read them. Don't play their game!
BEN STILLER
Zoolander
When I was a girl my mother said
I chattered like a magpie
even in my sleep, as if I knew one day
the words would all be stopped,
wine corked up in a bottle.
MAGGIE BUTT
"I am the Sphinx"
What lives in words is what words were needed to learn.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"To Speech"
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
Deeds not Words: I say so too!
And yet I find it somehow true,
A word may help a man in need,
To nobler act and braver deed.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"Facta non Verba"
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
EMILY DICKINSON
"A Word is Dead"
Kind words don't wear out the tongue.
DANISH PROVERB
Words [are] more beautiful than a found fall leaf.
WILLIAM H. GASS
A Temple of Texts
There are some things for which three words are three too many, and three thousand words that many words too less.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
When we think, our thoughts are in the form of words, so authorities must never be permitted to outlaw or edit our thinking by redefining or outlawing our words.
JONATHAN HOFFMAN
"Words are thoughts; protect them", Arizona Daily Star, March 11, 2017
Sometimes you want to say things, and you're missing an idea to make them with, and missing a word to make the idea with. In the beginning was the word. That's how somebody tried to explain it once. Until something is named, it doesn't exist.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Babel-17
Words are acoustical signs for concepts; concepts, however, are more or less definite image signs for often recurring and associated sensations, for groups of sensations. To understand one another, it is not enough that one use the same words; one also has to use the same words for the same species of inner experiences; in the end one has to have one's experiences in common.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
CHARLES DICKENS
Bleak House
Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God