quotations about words
Word -- that invisible dagger.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
GOETHE
Faust
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
Written, spoken or read I've always been amazed how one or two words could encourage someone to keep going. Or a devastating sentence could painfully break a person's heart. Even a simple written phrase could change someone's life forever.
HEIDI ALLEN
"Words Are Powerful -- My Journey With Words", Huffington Post, March 14, 2017
Words are but the bannerets of a great army, a few bits of waving color here and there; thoughts are the main body of the footman that march unseen below.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
If you can express yourself so as to be perfectly understood in ten words, never use a dozen.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
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
I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Harper's Magazine, November 2010
Of what use are good words to an evil heart?
LOUIS BECKE
"Solepa", By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore and Other Stories
It feels like spoken words, this bridge. I want it but fear it. God, I want so desperately to reach the other side -- just like I want the words. I want my words to build bridges strong enough to walk on. I want them to tower over the world so I can stand up on them and walk to the other side.
MARKUS ZUSAK
Getting the Girl
Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
No man weighs his words who has but a moment to live.
PHILIP MOELLER
Helena's Husband
My God! The English language is a form of communication! Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at! Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill! Words aren't only bombs and bullets -- no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!
PHILIP ROTH
Portnoy's Complaint
Words are powerful. They have the ability to build someone up or tear him down. And that someone includes you too. The words you say to yourself can either motivate you toward your goals, seriously hinder or stall your progress, or prevent you from even starting on your journey.
RACHEL GRICE
"7 Words to Stop Saying Right Now", Yahoo Health, January 24, 2016
As the bud a leaf, so at last the thought becomes a word.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
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
No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.
ROGER ZELAZNY
Lord of Light
Flaubert's famous search for the "mot juste" was not a search for words that glow alone, but for words so precisely placed that in combination with other words, also precisely placed, they carve out a shape in space and time.
STANLEY FISH
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
Words once sequenced into phrases were never done with but recycled themselves in perpetuity.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
Words [are] more beautiful than a found fall leaf.
WILLIAM H. GASS
A Temple of Texts