quotations about words
Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"
Words ... are little houses, each with its cellar and garret.
GASTON BACHELARD
The Poetics of Space
For human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
You must assume that your words are going to be repeated, misunderstood, or exaggerated by the person you "shared" with.
DREXEL GILBERT
"The top 5 words you should never say at work", New York Daily News, March 5, 2017
Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
When you doubt between two words, choose the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge: love simple ones, as you would native roses on your cheeks.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
Not content with the million or so words they already have at their disposal, English speakers are adding new ones at the rate of around 1,000 a year. Recent dictionary debutants include blog, grok, crowdfunding, hackathon, airball, e-marketing, sudoku, twerk and Brexit.
ANDY BODLE
"How new words are born", The Guardian, February 4, 2016
I hated the words. Each one was like a big live insect in my mouth.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
God's linguistic being is the word. All human language is only reflection of the word in name. Name is no closer to the word than knowledge to creation. The infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytical in nature in comparison to the absolutely unlimited and creative infinity of the divine word.
WALTER BENJAMIN
Reflections
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Investigations
Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.
GLEN DUNCAN
I, Lucifer
Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
GOETHE
Faust
The word; the forth-speaking of a thought, an idea, a truth, is the beginning of every new creation, or pulse of creation. It is the inauguration of every new order of things; it begins every new messianic reign, every coming of a better time. The darkness never comprehends it; but always, to as many as receive it, it gives power.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
Essays and Sermons
I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
There are some things for which three words are three too many, and three thousand words that many words too less.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
The same words
come from each mouth
differently.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Fifteen Pebbles"
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
Always having to have the last word is a bad trait. Pisses people off.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
The Lunatic Cafe
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