Quotes About Words

Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us. If we were no longer here, words would lose their whole function. They would end up as words that are never spoken, and words that aren't spoken are no longer words. - (Where I'm Likely To Find It)

Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their own image on men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer.

And for adults, the world of fantasy books returns to us the great words of power which, in order to be tamed, we have excised from our adult vocabularies. These words are the pornography of innocence, words which adults no longer use with other adults, and so we laugh at them and consign them to the nursery, fear masking as cynicism. These are the words that were forged in the earth, air, fire, and water of human existence, and the words are: Love. Hate. Good. Evil. Courage. Honor. Truth.

Sound words can't be understood through formal study of the language alone. They're felt when you immerse yourself in the culture or lifestyle that becomes a part of you. The Japanese language is abundant with onomatopoeia. Even though I've lived in Japan a long time, sound words are still an uncertain territory. And I think new words are being created every day. Even when I don't know a word I can sometimes connect it to a meaning using the sensations produced by the sounds, which feels like I'm playing with words.

Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.

I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.

It doesn't matter if you and everyone else in the room are thinking it. You don't say the words. Words are weapons. They blast big bloody holes in the world. And words are bricks. Say something out loud and it starts turning solid. Say it loud enough and it becomes a wall you can't get through.

I was carrying a beautiful alcoholic conflagration around with me. The thing fed on its own heat and flamed the fiercer. There was no time, in all my waking time, that I didn't want a drink. I began to anticipate the completion of my daily thousand words by taking a drink when only five hundred words were written. It was not long until I prefaced the beginning of the thousand words with a drink.

Words, words, word. Once, I had the gift. I could make love out of words as a potter makes cups of clay. Love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. For sixpence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery. But now -- I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud -illegible word- of my genius has collapsed.

sentences were used by man before words and still come with the readiness of instinct to his lips. They, and not words, are the foundations of all language. ... Your cat has no words, but it has considerable feeling for the architecture of the sentence in relation to the problem of expressing climax.

What does it mean to be a used white wife, a mother, a tragic girl writing poems? Sandra Simonds gets into these messy words and then tears them apart. Sometimes with the words of others. And sometimes with poems made from scratch. They aren't all bad, these words. But they aren't all good either. And that is where Mother was a Tragic Girl gets its power. You will at moments be laughing but then you will also at moments just as much be crying. If Antigone was alive and decided to write some poems about the nuclear family, she would write them like Sandra Simonds. These are tough.

I opened my mouth wide one time to see if the words I was thinking would fall out, but they wouldn’t. If words don’t want to come out, they don’t. I don’t understand when people say things and then they say, I didn’t mean to say that. Words don’t just fall out. You have to push them out. And sometimes, you can’t push them out, even if you want to.

The bait is the means to get the fish where you want it, catch the fish and you forget the bait. The snare is the means to get the rabbit where you want it, catch the rabbit and forget the snare. Words are the means to get the idea where you want it, catch on to the idea and you forget about the words. Where shall I find a man who forgets about words, and have a word with him?

The difference between prose logic and poetic thought is simple. The logician uses words as a builder uses bricks, for the unemotional deadness of his academic prose; and is always coining newer, deader words with a natural preference for Greek formations. The poet avoids the entire vocabulary of logic unless for satiric purposes, and treats words as living creatures with a preference for those with long emotional histories dating from mediaeval times. Poetry at its purest is, indeed, a defiance of logic.

Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. . .

Your words must match what you do. In so many words, you need to show sincerity with your words.

It is probably impossible to think without words, but if we permit ourselves to think with the wrong words, we shall soon be entertaining erroneous thoughts; for words, which are given us for the expression of thought, have a habit of going beyond their proper bounds and determining the content of thought.

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

The secret of Soto Zen is just two words: not always so.... In Japanese, it's two words, three words in English. That is the secret of our practice.

America is the promised land, because each generation bequeathed to its children a promise, a promise that they might not come to enjoy but which they fully expected their offspring to fulfill. So the words 'all men are created equal' took a life of its own, ultimately destined to end slavery and enfranchise women. And the words 'equal protection' and 'due process' inevitably led to the end of the words 'separate but equal,' ensuring that the walls of segregation would crumble, whether at the lunch counter or at the voting booth.

Prayer is something deeper than words. It is present in the soul before it has been formulated in words. And it abides in the soul after the last words of prayer have passed over our lips.

I feel positive about what I do. And, whoever is doing reggae, they have to have positive words and no negativity. They have to be positive. Yes, if you call it reggae, and it is negative words, it is not reggae.

People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?

I will remove from my vocabulary such words and phrases as quit, cannot, unable, impossible, out of the question, improbable, failure, unworkable, hopeless, and retreat; for they are the words of fools.

I have this theory about words. There's a thousand ways to say "Pass the salt". It could mean, you know, "Can I have some salt?" or it could mean, "I love you.". It could mean, "I'm very annoyed with you". Really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.

When we mistake words for reality, we are subject to the tyranny of words.

Many words are not proof of the wise man, because the sage only talk when it's needed, and the words are measured and corresponding with the need.

Reality changes words far more than words can ever change reality.

For me personally, I don't pray using words - it is just with my intent. Why do I need to pray with "words," to something external, when I know what I want?

In Greek, our word for play is paidia and the word for education is paideia, and it is very natural and right that these words should be entangled at the root, together with our word for children, paides, which gave you your words pedagogy and pediatrician.

Words have consequences, and I judge people not only by their words but what they do. And if you look at people who have a pattern, who've built a career out of dividing people and who built a career out of often not just Obama but finding ways to degrade and diminish African-Americans and African-American leaders. It's racist to consistently make your living on the backs of black people.

She [my mother] said that if I listened to her, later I would know what she knew: where true words came from, always from up high, above everything else. And if I didn't listen to her, she said my ear would bend too easily to other people, all saying words that had no lasting meaning, because they came from the bottom of their hearts, where their own desires lived, a place where I could not belong.

It's better when you don't understand the words in music. Because when you don't understand the words, you have to listen to what somebody means, not what they're saying. And if they mean it.

I usually arrive at the first rehearsal with a vague memory of most of it. But the real work happens in rehearsal, oddly enough, because what happens is that you match the words to the movement, and once you know where you're moving, then the words that accompany that movement become not locked into your mind and your brain and your whole body.

They think written words are even more powerful,’ whispered the toad. ‘They think all writing is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.

It's an unnecessary burden to try to think of words and also worry at the same time whether they're the right words.

I don't like pictures in books. I feel that the pictures diminish the words, and the words diminish the pictures, and it doesn't work.

If we understood the power of our thoughts, we would guard them more closely. If we understood the awesome power of our words, we would prefer silence to almost anything negative. In our thoughts and words we create our own weaknesses and our own strengths. Our limitations and joys begin in our hearts. We can always replace negative with positive.

[from The One and Only Official Mr. Gum Official Glossary That Tells You What Words Mean by Explaining Them Using Other Words] : Launderette: This is where you go to wash your clothes. You put the money into the slot and then you chuck your clothes into the washing machine and about six hours and twenty-five dollars later all your clothes have shrunk and turned pink. Fantastic value

Honesty is making our words align with reality. Integrity is making reality align with our words.

We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.

I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why.

The problem with words is that they easily lose their meaning. Say something often enough and it becomes a tic, not an expression of how you actually feel. Not only that, but words rarely change things. Actions do.

You don't move just because you want to go from this point to that point - the body has to be using the words as well as you vocally use the words.

I love you more than words. And I am a big fan of words.

Kind hearts are the gardens, Kind thoughts are the roots, Kind words are the flowers, Kind deeds are the fruits, Take care of your garden And keep out the weeds, Fill it with sunshine, Kind words, and Kind deeds.

Words are our servants, not our masters. For different purposes, we find it convenient to use words in different senses.

I feel that I have had a blow; but it is not, as I thought as a child, simply a blow from an enemy hidden behind the cotton wool of daily life; it is or will become a revelation of some order; it is a token of some real thing behind appearances; and I make it real by putting it into words. It is only by putting it into words that I make it whole; this wholeness means that it has lost its power to hurt me; it gives me, perhaps because by doing so I take away the pain, a great delight to put the severed parts together.