quotations about words
One mild word ... will quench more heat than a bucket of water.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Words have not the color of the rose
Nor the beauty of the morn!
EDWIN CURRAN
"The Depths of Love"
Words can only hurt you if you try to read them. Don't play their game!
BEN STILLER
Zoolander
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
Words were like objects, making the idea more solid -- less a poisonous gas and more a ... cube of crystallized thought.
DAN SIMMONS
Olympos
Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.
ROBERT ALTMAN
Esquire, March 2004
I am increasingly afflicted by vertigo where words mean nothing.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
The proof of battle is action, proof of words, debate.
HOMER
The Iliad
I was struck by the way in which meanings are historically attached to words: it is so accidental, so remote, so twisted. A word is like a schoolgirl's room--a complete mess--so the great thing is to make out a way of seeing it all as ordered, as right, as inferred and following.
WILLIAM H. GASS
The Paris Review, summer 1977
Word -- that invisible dagger.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
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
By words the mind is winged.
ARISTOPHANES
The Birds
After all is said and done, more is said than done.
AESOP
Aesop's Fables
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"
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 the physicians of a mind diseased.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
Through words we come to know the other person--and to be known. This knowing is at the heart of our deepest longings for intimacy and connection with others. How relationships unfold with the most important people in our lives depends on courage and clarity in finding voice.
HARRIET LERNER
The Dance of Connection
Words don't just change meanings randomly -- rather, implications hanging over a word gradually become what the word means. SUN implies HEAT. In a language, one might talk about getting some 'sun' in the meaning of warming up. After a while, in that language the word SUN may actually mean nothing but HEAT, something that would happen step by step, under the radar.
JOHN H. MCWHORTER
"Not so lost in translation: How are words related?", The Christian Science Monitor, February 3, 2016
I believe words have power. Words can build up your self-esteem or words can puff up your pride. Words can deceive you into wrong thinking or words can guide you to safety. Words can move you to compassion. Words can even heal. Your own words can defeat you since our mental self-talk is the software directing our life.
RON WOOD
"Words are weapons", Meridian Star, January 23, 2016