Quotes About Words

I want to make words out of life. That's bigger than me. That's as big a creative force as - bigger than, for me, even having children. That felt more accidental - wonderful, but accidental.

I used to get made fun of a lot for being a male dancer, especially growing up in Boston. Kids are terrible, they don't realize how heavy words can be.

I overuse words. My kids catch me saying stuff. They're like, 'Hey, you say that all the time.' 'Boom' is one of those things.

I used to like the word of the day and when I read, highlight words that I didn't know and look them up.

But words are vain; reject them all— They utter but a feeble part: Hear thou the depths from which they call, The voiceless longing of my heart.

All words, then, belonging to the inner world of the mind, are of the imagination, are originally poetic words.

O Lord, I have been talking to the people; Thought's wheels have round me whirled a fiery zone And the recoil of my word's airy ripple My heart unheedful has puffed up and blown. Therefore I cast myself before thee prone: Lay cool hands on my burning brain and press From my weak heart the swelling emptiness.

The greatest obscuration of the words of the Lord, as of all true teachers, comes from those who give themselves to interpret rather than do them. Theologians have done more to hide the gospel of Christ than any of its adversaries.

When one says to the great Thinker:-- Here is one of thy thoughts: I am thinking it now! that is a prayer--a word to the big heart from one of its own little hearts.-- Look, there is another!

My friends, I offer this as only a contribution towards the understanding of our Lord's words. But if we ask him, he will lead us into all truth. And let us not be afraid to think, for he will not take it ill.

alas, how little can language say without seeming to say something wrong!

The words of the Lord are not for the logic that deals with words as if they were things; but for the spiritual logic that reasons from divine thought to divine thought, dealing with spiritual facts.

The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity.

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender to them.

He had moved from thought to words, and now from words to actions.

I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.

What was happening was only the working-out of a process that had started years ago. The first step had been a secret, involuntary thought, the second had been the opening of the diary. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. The last step was something that would happen in the Ministry of Love. He had accepted it. The end was contained in the beginning.

I dreamt-' he began, and stopped short. It was too complex to be put into words. There was the dream itself, and there was a memory connected with it that had swum into his mind in the few seconds after waking.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender them.

Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, sub-aqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers.

After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself.

The stuff that was coming out of his mouth consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck.

I wanted to write enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound.