quotations about words
Oaths are but words, and words but wind.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
Our sense that words are static things sitting in the dictionary with a meaning -- or even meanings -- that sit still is artificial. Rather, a word is a process, always on its way to becoming a different one.
JOHN H. MCWHORTER
"Not so lost in translation: How are words related?", The Christian Science Monitor, February 3, 2016
Words are naught but wind, and the fairest promises like dreams that take flight with the morning.
ÉDOUARD RENÉ DE LABOULAYE
Abdallah
Wicked words are the prelude to wicked deeds.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Don't gobblefunk around with words.
ROALD DAHL
The BFG
Weigh words, don't count 'em.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Principles of Success in Literature
The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.
MARKUS ZUSAK
The Book Thief
The words fell as the axe of a skillful woodman falls at the root of a young tree and brings it down at a single blow.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Seraphita
Our generation throws a lot of slang around only to demand that other words be chosen with a pinpoint precision. Words today are both malleable as silly putty and hard as bricks.
ISABEL DRUKKER
"Sticks and stones", Campus Times, April 2, 2017
Wondrous depth of Thy words! whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth. O my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honor, and a trembling of love.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
Rigour and purity in assembling words, however simple the result, create a vacuum.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Into the vortex of this sea of messaging comes not an afterthought but very possibly the cause, the universal values that are necessary for a world tied together by what? By words. Words are not dying now, merely moving forward. Books are not dying. "In the beginning was the word" suggests that very foundation of reality begins with how we see and express it.
STEPHEN C. ROSE
"Cybercommunities will require a revolution based on messaging", Blasting News, April 3, 2017
A writer ... whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation.
JOHN DOS PASSOS
introduction, Three Soldiers
Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Equinox
Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk, speak to me Babel, that I may strive to assemble of all these syllables a single word before the purpose of speech is gone.
CONRAD AIKEN
"This Image or Another"
I make words up. It started when I had small children. I did it to make them laugh. I did it to keep them entertained. I did it because it was fun. And I did it to make them think and come up with words of their own!
DREXEL GILBERT
"The top 5 words you should never say at work", New York Daily News, March 5, 2017
There was a magic in the words. I suppose their power lay in their utter futility.
STELLA BENSON
I Pose
So powerful is the charm of words, which for us reduces to manageable entities all the passions that would otherwise madden and destroy us.
GENE WOLFE
The Shadow of the Torturer