quotations about words
Oaths are but words, and words but wind.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
The written word has this advantage, that it lasts and can await the time when it is allowed to take effect.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
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
Words never can express the whole that we feel: they give but an outline.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
You will hear words
old and spent and useless
like costumes left over
from yesterday's parties.
CESARE PAVESE
"The Cats Will Know"
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shade" and "yas queen" stick around until I'm old and gray, so I can say them to children without sounding like an outdated relic.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
Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Cave
Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full.
HORACE
Ars Poetica
The act of saying that things exist that cannot be described in words shakes a universe where words are the supreme belief.
FRANK HERBERT
Heretics of Dune
Words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"After Long Silence"
Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb! for I suppose he was dumb at the Creation, and must go round an entire circle in order to return to that blessed state.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
American Note-Books, April 1841
If words suffice not, blows must follow.
AESOP
"The Farmer and the Cranes", Aesop's Fables
Don't gobblefunk around with words.
ROALD DAHL
The BFG
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
You take many words to say simple things.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Autumn Garden
As a free people, we must respect those who speak honestly and forthrightly and be suspect of those who would torture the language, and otherwise misrepresent facts. Words are thoughts; protect them.
JONATHAN HOFFMAN
"Words are thoughts; protect them", Arizona Daily Star, March 11, 2017
The word was -- civilization!
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
Too many words cheapened the value of a man's speech.
PATRICIA BRIGGS
Raven's Shadow
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
Rigour and purity in assembling words, however simple the result, create a vacuum.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia