Quotes About Words

I searched for something to say, since you always have to fall back on words to prevent silence from speaking too loudly..

Les hobos évitaient, en général, d'apprendre des langues, pour ne pas se laisser piéger par tous les trucs qui vont avec le vocabulaire, lequel est toujours celui des autres, une espèce d'héritage, qui vous tombe dessus.

I used to be a poet. My words were traded in marketplaces like pieces of gold. Merchants bought my verses for as much as they paid for saffron and Indian jade. Now I am old... drunk on wine and candle fumes. Alone in this barren room, I speak my psalms to the night air so as to entertain moths before they go off to die. I used to be a poet and my words were gold.

Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed" and "A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.

Americans often wonder how this moment could have spawned such extraordinary men as Hamilton and Madison. Part of the answer is that the Revolution produced an insatiable need for thinkers who could generate ideas and wordsmiths who could lucidly expound them. The immediate utility of ideas was an incalculable tonic for the founding generation. The fate of the democratic experiment depended upon political intellectuals who might have been marginalized at other periods.

Here was a demonstration of what Howells maintained—at just about this time—was his most liberating literary strength, his "single-minded use of words, which he employs as Grant did to express the plain, straight meaning their common acceptance has given them . . . He writes English as if it were a primitive and not a derivative language, without Gothic or Latin or Greek behind it."13

She realized that being starved for words was the same as being starved for food, because both left a hollow place inside you, a place you needed filled to make it through another day. Rachel remembered how growing up she'd thought living on a farm with just a father was as lonely as you could be. (130)

Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near" (Revelation 1:3).

Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book" (Revelation 22:7). So

PROVERBS 15:1 | A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters Who count some days and long for cer- tain letters; We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep, Words are for those with promises to keep.

This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

They understood that the innate emotions of humans were mutable. Anger didn't have to lead to violence, hate to cruelty, fear to oppression. There was a space for change between what words were said and what deeds were done.

América Latina El poeta cara a cara con la luna fuma su margarita emocionante bebe su dosis de palabras ajenas vuela con sus pinceles de rocío rasca su violincito pederasta. Hasta que se destroza los hocicos en el áspero muro de un cuartel.

Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth. Anna Jameson

Gender-specific words (councilwoman, businessman, altar girl) are neither good nor bad in themselves, but they sometimes identify and even emphasize a person's sex when it is not necessary (and is sometimes even objectionable) to do so. Male and female versions of a root word are also likely to be weighted quite differently (governor/governess, master/mistress).

In the newspapers, the author of the proposal had constructed a cloud of lofty words around this bill—emancipation, freedom, equality, success—that disguised its truth: termination. Termination. Missing only the prefix. The ex.

In English there was a word for every object. In Ojibwe there was a word for every action. English had more shades of personal emotion, but Ojibwe had more shades of family relationships.

Nector got even by the use of penmanship.

We never change. Neither our socks nor our masters nor our opinions, or we're so slow about it that it's no use. We were born loyal, and that's what killed us! Soldiers free of charge, heroes for everyone else, talking monkeys, tortured words, we are the minions of King Misery; He's our lord and master!

When you stop to examine the way in which words are formed and uttered, our sentences are hard put to it to survive the disaster of their slobbery origins. The mechanical effort of conversation is nastier and more complicated than defecation.

The words were terrible, but they didn't have any power.