Quotes About Words

Solitude is a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.

even the meanest person has still at his disposition high-sounding words wherewith to mask his real character.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

Republicans have been losing the war of words for years now. Now they are just caving because they don't even want to try. I don't agree with that approach.

To all those people who say that the Tea Party is a racist organization, eat your words.

maar ik hou eigenlijk nog meer van een groep woorden die zich samen plotseling bijzonder intiem gaan voelen en zeggen: laat ons nou maar altijd bij elkaar, er hoeft er geen meer bij te komen.

You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality.

Having made them rise, I became guide to my race, teaching them the words – how to be saved and in what manner – and I sowed the words of wisdom among them, and they were nourished from the ambrosial water.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Like most modern words, "Heresy" is used both vaguely and diversely. It is used vaguely because the modern mind is as averse to precision in ideas as it is enamored of precision in measurement. It is used diversely because, according to the man who uses it, it may represent any one of fifty things.

It was not by a serpent, but by paper and ink that evil came into the world.

You mustn't stand about. Come home with me to dinner.' 'No.' More shakes his head. 'I would rather be blown around on the river and go home hungry. If I could trust you only to put food in my mouth – but you will put words into it.

It's the living that turn and chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives.

Interesting how our vocabulary responds, providing us with words we have never needed before, words stacked away for us, neatly folded into our brain and there for our use: like a bride's lifetime supply of linen, or a ducal trove of monogrammed china. Death will overtake us before a fraction of those words are used.

Give me a book," she said. "A book of sermons, anything." "What do you want a book for?" "I want words. I've got to have more words. I was kept stupid on purpose.

I do no damage. This is damage, this." He picked up a paper from Camille's desk. "I can't read your writing, but I take it the general tenor is that Brissot should go and hang himself.

You once told me, when you visited my house, how Anne conducts herself with men: she says, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, no."' Wyatt nods; he recognises those words; he looks sorry he spoke them. 'Now you may have to transpose one word of that testimony. Yes, yes, yes, no, yes.

Recently his son was sent off to learn the art of public speaking, and the result is that, though he still lacks the command that makes for rhetorical sweep, he has become more interested in words if you take them one by one. Sometimes he seems to be holding them up for scrutiny. Sometimes he seems to be poking them with a stick. Sometimes, and the comparison is unavoidable, he seems to approach them with the tail-wagging interest a dog takes in another dog's turds.

So many words,' Gregory says. 'So many words and oaths and deeds, that when folk read of them in time to come they will hardly believe such a man as Lord Cromwell walked the earth. You do everything. You have everything. You are everything. So I beg you, grant me an inch of your broad earth, Father, and leave my wife to me.

Metaphors are good,' he said. 'I like metaphors. Metaphors don't kill people.

With the words arrives the truth of them.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

I think of Cardan's words in the brugh, before he destroyed the crown: neither loyalty nor love should be compelled

Nothing he says is a lie, but all his words are riddles.