quotations about words
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
I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
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
Newsweek, July 13, 2009
Language is a symbolic resource and words are rarely neutral. Given the many possibilities for using language to define, trivialise or make people and groups invisible, it should come as no surprise that linguistic intervention as one way to help build more inclusive societies has a long history.
LIA LITOSSELITI
"Use gender-sensitive language or lose marks, university students told", The Guardian, April 2, 2017
Talk is never just words.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.
FRANK HERBERT
Children 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
The words we speak have such power, and we have the power to choose them wisely.
BARBARA WALSH
"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016
What so wild as words are?
ROBERT BROWNING
A Woman's Last Word
Words are but the shining garments of Thought.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
Words are like Leaves; and where they most abound,
Much Fruit of Sense beneath is rarely found.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
Words are not necessary to one's experience of the true life.
DON DELILLO
Point Omega
Words are so last year.
BEANO
Twitter post, March 31, 2017
Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Words carried weight, some more than others, and it seemed to him that once you'd arranged them into phrases they stayed that way like bricks you'd laid in a wall and went on meaning what they said no matter what happened.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
Words come in many varieties. They show actions and feelings; they demonstrate obtuse or abstract ideas or they express concrete notions. Often we divide words into simple words, everyday language, and complicated or complex words, and words that should express subtleties. Often we use words not to be clear but to obfuscate our intentions and hide our real meanings. These are the words that at first sound wonderful but upon examining, we come to realize that they are veils hiding truth and vehicles of confusion.
PETER TARLOW
"What words can really mean in life", The Eagle, February 6, 2016
Words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Words like violence
Break the silence
Come crashing in
Into my little world
DEPECHE MODE
"Enjoy the Silence"
Words of the jargon sound as if they said something higher than what they mean.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Jargon of Authenticity
Words which enlighten some darken others.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims