quotations about words
When you write you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a woodcarver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it and it digs a path you follow.
ANNIE DILLARD
The Writing Life
Our sense that words are static things sitting in the dictionary with a meaning -- or even meanings -- that sit still is artificial. Rather, a word is a process, always on its way to becoming a different one.
JOHN H. MCWHORTER
"Not so lost in translation: How are words related?", The Christian Science Monitor, February 3, 2016
Our words are always formative ... what we think and constantly affirm becomes our reality.
BARBARA WALSH
"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016
Actions speak louder than words, because as much as I hate to admit it, words don't have to mean anything if you don't want them to. Lying is easy.
ISABEL DRUKKER
"Sticks and stones", Campus Times, April 2, 2017
Words are very unnecessary
They can only do harm
DEPECHE MODE
"Enjoy the Silence"
Throughout the years my writing has taken on many styles. Whether it was to discover myself, de-clutter my mind, get over heartache or decipher the lessons I was supposed to learn. Good or bad, words have always been there for me.
HEIDI ALLEN
"Words Are Powerful -- My Journey With Words", Huffington Post, March 14, 2017
Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.
EDWARD HIRSCH
How to Read a Poem
Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to J. H. Tiffany, March 31, 1819
A word is nothing unless it has values and an atmosphere, unless you grasp its historical significance.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Confusion of Feelings or Confusion
Such simple words! But words are mighty things;
They cast us down, or lift us up to rest;
They charm and strengthen, till our angel sings
The last of all the life-songs, and the best.
SARAH DOUDNEY
Some Words
The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.
JACK LONDON
The Star Rover
Our words are such powerful tools, tools that shape divine ideas into reality.
BARBARA WALSH
"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
GEORGE ORWELL
The Lion and the Unicorn
Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.
SIGMUND FREUD
attributed, The Educator's Book of Quotes
All words are pegs to hang ideas on.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The sharpest sword is a word spoken in wrath.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Culture and Value
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
You wait for nothing
if not for the word
that will burst from the deep
like a fruit among branches.
CESARE PAVESE
"Earth and Death"