Quotes About Words

Like a beautifully brightly colored flower without fragrance, is the well-spoken word without action.

A single wise word bringing peace to the listener is worth more than a thousand speeches of empty words.

When we talk about the theology of "God is dead," this means that the notion of God must be dead in order for God to reveal himself as a reality. The theologians, if they only use concepts, words, and not direct experience, are not very helpful. The same goes for nirvana, which is something to be touched and lived and not discussed and described. We have notions that distort truth, reality.

Your words are you. You are them and not much more. The Description: the fieldness of fields, the weediness of weeds… When is description mere? Never. A freshness in the seeing, an innocency in the vision, the angle of perception, the bringing together of details, not necessarily as metaphors, even, just as objects. Be one of those on whom, as Lawrence said, nothing is lost. Don't strain for arrangement. Look and put it down and let your sensibility be the sieve.

Acquiesce, to the messenger. Acquiesce, to and for the complot in the Hieratic tongue. Theirs. Into Their tongue, the counterscript, my confession in Theirs. Into Theirs. To scribe to make hear the words, to make sound the words, the words, the words made flesh.

In Vietnamese, there's a proverb that says, When you love, you use the cane. When you hate, you use your sweet kind words.

The negative attitude toward the description of ultimate reality by words is common to all Buddhist doctrine. The dictum used by Bodhidharma is only a drastic way of bringing people to this original attitude which underlines the importance of direct spiritual experience and discredits intellectual speculation.

A Zen Master uses concepts and words like everyone else; but he is neither conditioned nor captivated by these concepts and these words. The language of Zen always aims at destroying the habits of those who only know how to think by concepts. It tends to provoke crises, whose function it is to bring to fruition the precious moment of Awakening.

I'm a writer. I've been a journalist for my whole adult life.

Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.

One of the joys of language is its constant evolution, and a lexicographer's job is both to track new words and to reassess those from the past.

I am, in some sense, a writer. Even though I kinda downplay the word thing, I do enjoy writing sometimes.

I think we use a lot of words and labels when trying to describe people: ones with autism, ones without autism. In general, I think that labeling people is a major issue, and people don't understand the power of language.

A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do.

The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words, return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy. —Florence Scovel Shin

Whatever he writes will mean You have not silenced me. Despite all your power, you are not all powerful. Men have often reduced his voice to gasps and weeping. They have crushed the power to speak from his body, from many bodies. But words written down outlive the vulnerability of the flesh. His songs will fly through the air like swallows. Recorded words can be passed along. In one form or another, they will be passed along. Movement is their essential nature.

When a family member's behavior threatens to knock the nice right out of us, we can pause. Recalculate. Punch in a different destination for the words now downloading from our brains onto our tongues. We can program them to first stop at gentleness, swing by to pick up respect, and finally — arrive with grace.

Long before our words go wrong, our hearts are the place in which they fester and brew. We must take very careful care of our hearts and their condition so that the words that come forth will be pleasant and sweet instead of hurtful and bitter. But just how do we do this?

Gracious words promote instruction" (16:21).

Lord, I give my mouth to you today. May what comes forth be sweet and not bitter. May the journey each word takes from my mind to my heart to my lips be guided by your hand. May what comes out be life-giving rather than causing death. May my words make you proud and bring you glory. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Psychiatrist Louann Brizendine states in The Female Brain, "Men use about seven thousand words per day. Women use about twenty thousand.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

Our words are powerful, and they have consequences. Whether it is a string of words screamed out in anger during the height of a marital spat, or a politician who chooses to lie in order to win votes, or even just a middle schooler trying to impress a group of boys. Our words are powerful, and our words have consequences.

Let our words be like tools in the hands of a skilled carpenter. With God's help, let's build something beautiful, intimate, and renewing in our relationships using our words. Let our lives be a place where we invite true friendship to happen.