quotations about words
It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you're not quite there and you're redoing it and redoing it and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard.
ELIZABETH STROUT
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Newsweek, July 13, 2009
With words, we can negotiate deals. With words, we can enter into the covenant of marriage. With words, we can declare war. Words reveal our intent and purpose.
RON WOOD
"Words are weapons", Meridian Star, January 23, 2016
Words which enlighten some darken others.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The words of God are deeds.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.
ROGER ZELAZNY
Lord of Light
In our world, words seem to flow in endless disharmony. Words are often misused in ways that do an injustice to truth. We are exposed to endless words in print, social media and everyday speaking that do not build a framework of goodness, honesty and truth. We experience words that alarm, serve people's own selfish needs, are untruthful, controlling, or seek to appeal in ways that do not speak the truth in love. When the power of self-interest replaces truth, we are headed in the direction of chaos.
LARRY ROREM
"Choosing our words truthfully", Juneau Empire, March 26, 2017
Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Jargon of Authenticity
Words come reluctantly to me, they clatter in my mouth and tumble out heavily like stones.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Written, spoken or read I've always been amazed how one or two words could encourage someone to keep going. Or a devastating sentence could painfully break a person's heart. Even a simple written phrase could change someone's life forever.
HEIDI ALLEN
"Words Are Powerful -- My Journey With Words", Huffington Post, March 14, 2017
Flaubert's famous search for the "mot juste" was not a search for words that glow alone, but for words so precisely placed that in combination with other words, also precisely placed, they carve out a shape in space and time.
STANLEY FISH
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
Word -- that invisible dagger.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
The way that words mutate reminds me of fashions in music. The word--the note--is a constant. But the setting and chord in which it occurs alters with the mood of a nation from major to minor, from the assertive to the mournful and foreboding.
NEAL ASCHERSON
"Chords of Identity in a Minor Key", Games with Shadows
Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation and Empire
Words are never "only words"; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
CHARLES DICKENS
Bleak House
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
Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"
Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world
DEPECHE MODE
"Enjoy the Silence"