Quotes About Words

Value your words. Each one may be the last.

What I require is a convening of my culture's criteria, in order to confront them with my words and life as I pursue them; and at the same time to confront my words and life as I pursue them with the life my culture's words may imagine for me: to confront the culture with itself, along the lines in which it meets me.

Before the words slide into their slots, they are just discrete items, pointing everywhere and nowhere.

And the words slide into the slots ordained by syntax, and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call meaning.

What is a sentence, anyway?

It is often said that the job of language is to report or reflect or mirror reality, but the power of language is greater and more dangerous than that; it shapes reality, not of course in a literal sense - the world is one thing, words another - but in the sense that the order imposed on a piece of the world by a sentence is only one among innumerable possible orders.

In the words of Durk Pearson and Sandra Shaw, the authors of Life Extension

Language shapes consciousness, And the use of language to shape consciousness Is an important branch of magic.

Do not be afraid of my words: a dead woman wants nothing more, she wants neither love nor pity nor consolation.

N'aie pas peur de mes paroles: une morte ne veut plus rien, elle ne veut ni amour, ni pitié, ni réconfort.

la sola idea de un libro con palabras alineadas, renglones, páginas y hojas, la sola idea de un libro en el que leer, perseguir y capturar pensamientos nuevos, frescos, diferentes de los míos, pensamientos para distraerse y para atesorarlos en mi cerebro, esa sola idea era capaz de embriagarme y también de serenarme.

ArkadaÅŸlar beni teselli edecekler ve bana baz? sözler söyleyecekler; sözler, sözler; ama kelimeler bana nas?l yard?m edebilir ki? Biliyorum, yine yaln?z kalmak zorunday?m. Ve insanlar aras?nda yaln?z kalmaktan daha korkuncu yoktur.

There was a magic in the words. I suppose their power lay in their utter futility.

They were not spontaneous people. They were born with too great a love of words, a passion for drama at the expense of truth, and a habit of overweighting common life with romance.

At first when you're learning a foreign language, what seems strange is that a different set of words exists for the things you know. But then, after a while, what seems strange is that so many words are the same, that two entirely different peoples, an ocean apart, would choose the exact same sounds. In the end, what causes the most trouble are the words that sound the same but mean different things: déception, nostalgie, grâce.

We should never use the truth to wound.

Raised voices lower esteem. Hot tempers cool friendships. Loose tongues stretch truth. Swelled heads shrink influence. Sharp words dull respect.

Truth could never be wholly contained in words. All of us know it: At the same moment the mouth is speaking one thing, the heart is saying another.

Justice, truth, and beauty are sisters and comrades. With three such beautiful words we have no need to look for any others.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.

Divine symbols which have been given to mankind from time to time speak to that forum of truth which is within our hearts, and waken our consciousness to divine ideas entirely beyond words.

The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.

I believe fervently in the nature, in truth and imagination, I believe in the blood, in life, words, and motivations.

We need a safe place, a reserve of truth, a place where words kindle ideas and set ideas sparking off in others, a word sanctuary. Poetry is this gathering place of words.