quotations about words
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
letter to Kirill Nabokov, c. 1930
In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of reach of common understanding--symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
When you come to rely on the written word, it's time to light the fire with it.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
All our words from loose using have lost their edge.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Death in the Afternoon
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
letter, April 9, 1945
Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
The Olive Tree
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
With words, I could build a world I could live in. I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation.
MARY OLIVER
"Maria Shriver Interviews the Famously Private Poet Mary Oliver", O Magazine, March 2011
The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.
JACK LONDON
The Star Rover
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
Words are such gross machinery, so primitive and ambiguous.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
Talking always gets in the way of a good honest conversation.
GREG VOVOS
The Blogger
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
GEORGE ORWELL
The Lion and the Unicorn
Our words are such powerful tools, tools that shape divine ideas into reality.
BARBARA WALSH
"Choosing our words wisely for encouragement", Deming Headlight, January 28, 2016
I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.
PABLO NERUDA
"So That You Will Hear Me"
It seems that slang words are generated much more quickly in the Internet era, with memes pushing all sorts of words out into the world for quick consumption and even quicker disappearance. After a short space of time, these words are quickly replaced by a new wave of memes, and the cycle begins once again. But while I'm glad that slang words like "on fleek" and "bae" are slowly tapering out, I hope that phrases like "throwing shade" and "yas queen" stick around until I'm old and gray, so I can say them to children without sounding like an outdated relic. Because, you know, those are my priorities.
MEHAK ANWAR
"5 Slang Words That Will Never Go Out Of Style, Because It's Always Been Cool To Say 'Cool'", Bustle, February 10, 2016
Words are soldiers of fortune
Hired by different ideas.
MAXWELL BODENHEIM
"Impulsive Dialogue"
The clear and simple words of common usage are always better than those of erudition. The jargon of the philosophers not seldom conceals an absence of thought.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
The Art of Writing
We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
Winston Churchill's Great Quotation Book: From Alamein to Zest for Life