quotations about words
As long as words a different sense will bear,
And each may be his own interpreter,
Our airy faith will no foundation find;
The word's a weathercock for every wind.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Hind and the Panther
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.
ELIE WIESEL
attributed, The Little Book of Romanian Wisdom
Avoid, which many grave men have not done, words taken from sacred subjects and from elevated poetry: these we have seen vilely prostituted. Avoid too the society of the barbarians who misemploy them.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
"Barrow and Newton", Dialogues of Literary Men
Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?
JAMES JOYCE
"The Dead", Dubliners
In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
In our world, words seem to flow in endless disharmony. Words are often misused in ways that do an injustice to truth. We are exposed to endless words in print, social media and everyday speaking that do not build a framework of goodness, honesty and truth. We experience words that alarm, serve people's own selfish needs, are untruthful, controlling, or seek to appeal in ways that do not speak the truth in love. When the power of self-interest replaces truth, we are headed in the direction of chaos.
LARRY ROREM
"Choosing our words truthfully", Juneau Empire, March 26, 2017
With words, we can negotiate deals. With words, we can enter into the covenant of marriage. With words, we can declare war. Words reveal our intent and purpose.
RON WOOD
"Words are weapons", Meridian Star, January 23, 2016
Words carry weight and have impact. Our generation's vocabulary is a significant part of our culture, and everyone contributes. Words have history and baggage that are too often ignored. Meanings of words change, often incredibly slowly, so using a word now can mean that you are implicitly using all of its past meanings. Using that word can take you back to its origin and render you a contributor to the degradation it was meant to cause.
GRACE JOHNSON
"Words and their weight", The Brown Daily Herald, January 27, 2016
Theirs, too, is the word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
"Notes on an Elizabethan Play", The Common Reader
The pressed oil of words can blaze up into music, into image, into the heart and mind's knowledge. The lit and shadowed places within us can be warmed.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
I hated the words. Each one was like a big live insect in my mouth.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
Always having to have the last word is a bad trait. Pisses people off.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
The Lunatic Cafe
Words are the light and sound of our existence, the heat lightning by which the night is illuminated.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
Our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people derive from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
The words that bore the deathless verse of Homer from bard to a group of fascinated hearers, and with whose fading sounds the poems passed beyond recall, are fixed on the printed page in a hundred tongues. They carry to a million eyes what once could reach but a hundred ears.
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
lecture at Columbia University, March 4, 1908
My method is to find a word with a gesture.
CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN
An Evolution in Aphorisms
I shall repeat a hundred times; we really ought to free ourselves from the seduction of words!
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
Words come reluctantly to me, they clatter in my mouth and tumble out heavily like stones.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Investigations
The poet cannot invent new words every time, of course. He uses the words of the tribe. But the handling of the word, the accent, a new articulation, renew them.
EUGENE IONESCO
Present Past / Past Present