quotations about words
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
ELIE WIESEL
attributed, The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom
Words are the physicians of a mind diseased.
AESCHYLUS
Prometheus Bound
Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Conversations with God
Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
MARK TWAIN
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Words are not necessary to one's experience of the true life.
DON DELILLO
Point Omega
Words are in this respect like water, that they often take their taste, flavour, and character, from the mouth out of which they proceed, as the water from the channel through which it flows.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
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
Words are acoustical signs for concepts; concepts, however, are more or less definite image signs for often recurring and associated sensations, for groups of sensations. To understand one another, it is not enough that one use the same words; one also has to use the same words for the same species of inner experiences; in the end one has to have one's experiences in common.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
Words are a pretty fuzzy substitute for mathematical equations.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation and Empire
Word -- that invisible dagger.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
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 so wild as words are?
ROBERT BROWNING
A Woman's Last Word
What lives in words is what words were needed to learn.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"To Speech"
The words of God are deeds.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
Sometimes you want to say things, and you're missing an idea to make them with, and missing a word to make the idea with. In the beginning was the word. That's how somebody tried to explain it once. Until something is named, it doesn't exist.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Babel-17
Make friends with words. You can't give words a pat on the back, nor can you shake hands with words. But like an old friend, words can fill you with a nostalgia that's indescribably sweet.
SHUJI TERAYAMA
attributed, "VOX POPULI: Words are like friends that bring comfort and meaning to life", Vox Populi, January 27, 2016
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
If you can express yourself so as to be perfectly understood in ten words, never use a dozen.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts