Quotes About Words

Visit any public school toilet and look at the graffiti. You'll see that when children are interested, they can learn to spell quite complicated words.

All it takes is a few words to make a strong impression, good or bad.

documents—a luxury that earlier lexicographers never enjoyed.

But when you get music and words together, that can be a very powerful thing.

When you speak, your words echo only across the room or down the hall. but when you write, your words echo down the ages.

The tongue like a sharp knife... Kills without drawing blood.

However many holy words you read, However many you speak, What good will they do you, If you do not act upon them?

I'm not trying to stump anybody... it's the beauty of the language that I'm interested in.

But what it was that inscrutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of his—these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey.

These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks—

These are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen themselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks— the Coke-upon-Littleton of the fist.

Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army! See them how they stand in rank ready for assault, the jolly, swaggering fellows!

But when he spoke, that great voice of his poured out of his chest in words like the snowflakes of winter, and then no other mortal could in debate contend with Odysseus. Nor did we care any longer how he looked.

The tongue of man is a twisty thing.

For lo? my words no fancied woes relate; I speak from science and the voice of fate.

Come— the proof of battle is action, proof of words, debate. No time for speeches now, it's time to fight.

O insolence of youth! whose tongue affords Such railing eloquence, and war of words. Studious thy country's worthies to defame, Thy erring voice displays thy mother's shame.

my own grief is greatest of all, for you did not stretch forth your arms and embrace me as you lay dying, nor say to me any words that might have lived with me in my tears night and day forever more.

Translation is the art of listening. In one ear is the sound of the original text, and in the other is a rhythm, wordless, waiting to find its voice. Somehow, eventually, the right words rise into the rhythm and become it, as if the listening created what one wanted to hear.

To make a point of declaring friendship is to cheapen it. For men's emotions are very rarely put into words successfully.

I'm a word freak. I like words. I've always compared writing to music. That's the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it's like music.

It had been a bad trip ... fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way back to San Francisco, I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz' final words from the heart of darkness: The horror! The horror! ... Exterminate all the brutes!

Freedom, Truth, Honor—you could rattle off a hundred such words and behind every one of them would gather a thousand punks, pompous little farts, waving the banner with one hand and reaching under the table with the other. I

Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception.