Quotes About Words

Where words prevail not, violence prevails; But gold doth more than either of them both.

I list not trust the air With utterance of our pretence therein, For fear the privy whisp'ring of the wind Convey our words amongst unfriendly ears, That lie too open to advantages.

optimism, where it is not merely the thoughtless talk of those who harbor nothing but words under their shallow foreheads, seems to me to be not merely an absurd, but also a really wicked, way of thinking, a bitter mockery of the most unspeakable sufferings of mankind

No standard exists for the peculiarity and ridiculousness of things, not even one that is unspeakable or unknowable, words which are merely a front or a subterfuge. These qualities – the peculiar and the ridiculous – are immanent and absolute in all existence and would be in any conceivable existent order . . .

and it will always happen, that the nicest construction that words are capable of, when applied to the description of some thing which either cannot exist, or is too incomprehensible to be within the compass of discription, will be words of sound ony, and though they may amuse the ear, they cannot inform the mind

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.

His laughter was an insulting bray; it crowded and pushed the air ahead of it. He said many true words about other men. I never heard him say a kind one.19

It isn't the words we speak that make us who we are. Or even the deeds we do. It is the secrets buried in our hearts.

Emotional literacy is the ability to translate our emotions into words so that our feelings and thoughts can be held out in the intellectual space between two people, shared and reflected on, so that we can think about what we're feeling. It is a natural outgrowth of sound emotional development. To attain and maintain emotional sobriety, we need to learn to tolerate our strong feelings and translate those feelings into words.

I wouldn't like to have to translate Márai myself. At times, his ordering of words can be as intricate and polished as Ovid's. It is worth pointing out that the original Hungarian title of Embers is "Candles Burn to the End" - a little unwieldy, perhaps, in English, but a title better suited to a novel about how the important emotions never end until death.

How much do you wanna bet the last man standing in a battle is usually the biggest fool of all?" Absorbing his words was like taking a drink of hot tea. They burned on the way down, but soothed my insides once they had time to cool off. We

Language is power that gets abused all the time, Robin, but we've got real enemies out there somewhere and until they're out of the picture, I won't get knotted up over people who don't get all the words right. It's a waste of energy.

Words lead us to the doorway of Truth, but only by contemplating their meaning can we pass through.

The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.

Normally, if you play a part, you have the words, and you invent the personality out of your experience, your knowledge - your life, in a way.

What I normally do with long scenes is that I understand the emotional content and the words fall into place.

I have a fondness for words. On that note, I don't consider my lyrics to be all that great. I like to call myself a supplier of words rather than a lyricist.

Pretty much, the writer's in charge in theater. Of course you're in charge with the director, but no one can change your words. People can give you notes, but you don't have to take them. In Hollywood you take them and you cash your check and that's your job. It's very different.

Novelists are in the business of constructing consciousness out of words, and that's what we all do, cradle to grave. The self is a story we tell.

I fell in love with words in all languages, and I read everything I could find, particularly myths and legends and histories and archeology and any novels.

For much of my career I had no authentic political voice. I had been campaigning all over the country not to change the world or shake up my audiences but to please the roomful of people to whom I was speaking... As a result, my words rarely had the ring of truth to the nonpolitical observer.

We are obsessive NPR listeners.

Where, in what cemetery of the heavens, did the tender words of lovers rest when they loved no longer?

The only thing that words can do with any real precision or accuracy is hang together. Accuracy of description in language is not possible beyond a certain point: the most faithfully descriptive account of anything will always turn away from what it describes into its own self-contained grammatical fictions of subject and predicate and object.