Quotes About Words

Although many people deprecate words in favor of images and feelings, God chose to reveal himself and to communicate with us in the words of human language. Words are able to convey in an exact and univocal manner information from God and about God. This affirms that Scripture is a meaningful divine revelation, and it also affirms that preaching and writing are able to communicate the mind of God as set forth in the Bible.

Actions require words to speak for them, explaining their origins and implications, or else they remain silent.

We spent our whole lives in unconsous excercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words

Ciò che più parla nelle parole è il silenzio.

There are times in the writing of history when we must use words we personally abhor.

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible

A meeting is that measure whereby a large number of people gather and some say things that they don't think and others think things that they don't say.

No smiths forge myths.

Come" meant praise and petting and a treat, so pretty soon I always showed up for it. But my favorite words from him were "Good dog!" "Good dog!" always meant he would pet me, rubbing my fur until I wriggled from my toes to my tail with happiness. His hands smelled of oil and his truck and of papers and other people.

Remember: The essence of a living philosophy is that it must be alive. To be alive, it must be lived. To be lived, you must act! Actions, not mere words, determine the validity of a man's living philosophy.

Where My Books Go All the words that I gather, And all the words that I write, Must spread out their wings untiring, And never rest in their flight, Till they come where your sad, sad heart is, And sing to you in the night, Beyond where the waters are moving, Storm darkened or starry bright.

IF this importunate heart trouble your peace With words lighter than air

Go gather by the humming sea Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell. And to its lips thy story tell, And they thy comforters will be. Rewording in melodious guile Thy fretful words a little while, Till they shall singing fade in ruth And die a pearly brotherhood; For words alone are certain good: Sing, then, for this is also sooth. -from "The Song of the Happy Shepherd

every word was audible and expressive, as the words in a song were always, as I think, before music grew too proud to be the garment of words, flowing and changing with the flowing and changing of their energies.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

All I have is a voice.

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood; But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.

Oh dear white children, casual as birds, Playing among the ruined languages, So small beside their large confusing words.

Precocious children rarely grow up good). My aunts and uncles thought me quite atrocious. For using words more adult than I should

O dear white children casual as birds, Playing among the ruined languages, So small beside their large confusing words, So gay against the greater silences Of dreadful things you did…

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." — W. H. Auden

Whatever else it may or may not be, I want every poem I write to be a hymn in praise of the English language.