WORDS QUOTES V

quotations about words

No man weighs his words who has but a moment to live.

PHILIP MOELLER

Helena's Husband

Tags: Philip Moeller


What lives in words is what words were needed to learn.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

"To Speech"

Tags: Jane Hirshfield


You know, without my telling you, how sometimes a word or name eludes you, and you seek it through running ghosts of shadow -- leaping at it, lying in wait for it to spring upon it, spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound: until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest, you hear it, see it flash among the branches, and scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it.

CONRAD AIKEN

The House of Dust

Tags: Conrad Aiken


Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world

DEPECHE MODE

"Enjoy the Silence"


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

Tags: George Eliot


Words are but the bannerets of a great army, a few bits of waving color here and there; thoughts are the main body of the footman that march unseen below.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

Tags: Henry Ward Beecher


All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Thoughts on Art and Life

Tags: Leonardo da Vinci


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

Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


I sit and say nothing for fear
My words will turn to stone
And though they are sincere,
They will become a prison of their own.

GARRISON KEILLOR

Pilgrims

Tags: Garrison Keillor


The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.

FRANK HERBERT

Children of Dune


All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

We

Tags: Yevgeny Zamyatin


Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.

DAN SIMMONS

Olympos

Tags: Dan Simmons


Words are not necessary to one's experience of the true life.

DON DELILLO

Point Omega


Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Stone Gods

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


Prowling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...

ANNE CARSON

Nox

Tags: Anne Carson


Just pick words and put one of them after the other like a baby learning to walk, like a drunk carefully crossing the street.

WILLIAM GAY

Provinces of Night

Tags: William Gay


Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.

ALEXANDER POPE

An Essay on Criticism

Tags: Alexander Pope


By words the mind is winged.

ARISTOPHANES

The Birds

Tags: Aristophanes


There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.

THOMAS REID

Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man

Tags: Thomas Reid


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

Tags: Slavoj Zizek