Quotes About Words

If actions only could be made the ground of criminal prosecutions, and words were always allowed to pass free, sedition would be divested of every semblance of justification.

But the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most bare-faced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity.

Fools live to regret their words, wise men to regret their silence.

Eternals I hear your call gladly, Dictate swift winged words, & fear not To unfold your dark visions of torment.

As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.

It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written. A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds, the corn become a black smut, and all libraries, of necessity, be burned to the ground as a consequence. Only one answer: write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive.

Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless. --through metaphor to reconcile the people and the stones. Compose. (No ideas but in things) Invent! Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks.

The man of imagination who turns to art for release and fulfilment of his baby promises contends with the sky through the layers of demoded words and shapes.

This is the sadness of the sea— waves like words, all broken— a sameness of lifting and falling mood. I lean watching the detail of brittle crest, the delicate imperfect foam, yellow weed one piece like another— There is no hope—if not a coral island slowly forming to wait for birds to drop the seeds will make it habitable

The Wind Increases The harried earth is swept; the trees; the tulip's bright tips sidle and toss - Loose your love to flow - Blow! Good Christ, what is a poet - if any exists? A man whose words will bite their way home - being actual, having the form of motion at each twigtip upon the tortured body of thought; gripping the ground a way to the last leaftip.

Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait, sleepless.

There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable.

People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

I would think how words go straight up in a thin line, quick and harmless, and how terribly doing goes along the earth, clinging to it, so that after a while the two lines are too far apart for the same person to straddle from one to the other; and that sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words.

She is like all the rest of them. Whether they are seventeen or fortyseven, when they finally come to surrender completely, it's going to be in words.

I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue...

I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.

One day I was talking to Cora. She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.

Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forget the words

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear.

Perhaps love cannot live anywhere but books.

He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn't need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. Cash

She prayed for me because she believed I was blind to sin, wanting me to kneel and pray too, because people to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.