quotations about words
The proof of battle is action, proof of words, debate.
HOMER
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The Iliad
A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
GASTON BACHELARD
The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos
Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"Variations Upon Love"
When I was a girl my mother said
I chattered like a magpie
even in my sleep, as if I knew one day
the words would all be stopped,
wine corked up in a bottle.
MAGGIE BUTT
"I am the Sphinx"
What lives in words is what words were needed to learn.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"To Speech"
Words have not the color of the rose
Nor the beauty of the morn!
EDWIN CURRAN
"The Depths of Love"
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"
Kind words don't wear out the tongue.
DANISH PROVERB
A man does not die for words. He dies for his relation to them.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
A Place To Come To
What so wild as words are?
ROBERT BROWNING
A Woman's Last Word
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
CHARLES DICKENS
Bleak House
Of what use are good words to an evil heart?
LOUIS BECKE
"Solepa", By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore and Other Stories
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
Words are sometimes signs of ideas; sometimes of the want of them.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Words are mere sound and smoke, dimming the heavenly light.
GOETHE
Faust
Words are never "only words"; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
First as Tragedy, Then as Farce
Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
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
Word -- that invisible dagger.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion