WORDS QUOTES VI

quotations about words


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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
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Lacon


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Tags: Charles Caleb Colton


If the word is not dead when it reaches the hearer, he murders it at once by a contradiction, a stipulation, a condition, a digression, an interruption, and all the thousand tricks of conversation.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


The beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.

THOMAS MANN

The Magic Mountain

Tags: Thomas Mann


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


Words once sequenced into phrases were never done with but recycled themselves in perpetuity.

WILLIAM GAY

Provinces of Night


I am increasingly afflicted by vertigo where words mean nothing.

DORIS LESSING

The Golden Notebook


A man does not die for words. He dies for his relation to them.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

A Place To Come To

Tags: Robert Penn Warren


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


After all is said and done, more is said than done.

AESOP

Aesop's Fables

Tags: Aesop


Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.

ELIE WIESEL

attributed, The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom

Tags: Elie Wiesel


Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.

AESCHYLUS

Prometheus Bound

Tags: Aeschylus


Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.

MAYA ANGELOU

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Tags: Maya Angelou


Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

"Barrow and Newton", Dialogues of Literary Men

Tags: Walter Savage Landor


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


Though I do keep lists of words that catch my attention for a variety of reasons, they rarely make it into poems, not infrequently because I lose the lists.

WALTER BARGEN

"An Interview with Walter Bargen", BkMk Press

Tags: Walter Bargen


Desires and words go hand in hand ... they are moved by the same intention to join together, to communicate, to establish bridges between people, whether they are spoken or written.

LAURA ESQUIVEL

Swift as Desire

Tags: Laura Esquivel


Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.

ARTHUR SYMONS

"Variations Upon Love"

Tags: Arthur Symons


I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

November

Tags: Gustave Flaubert


A good word costs as little as a bad one, and is worth more.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Tags: Benjamin Whichcote