Popular quotes about Words! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 9
I can never say what I want to say, it's been like this for a while now. I try to say something but all I get are wrong words - the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It's like I'm split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this can't catch her.
Haruki MurakamiWords, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.
Aldous HuxleySound 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.
Hyon GyonI 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.
Mitch AlbomI have used the words and expressions which my experiences from Minsk to Kharkov to the Don suggested to me. But I should have reserved those words and expressions for what came later, even though they are not strong enough. It is a mistake to use intense words without carefully weighing and measuring them, or they will have already been used when one needs them later. It's a mistake, for instance, to used the word frightful to describe a few broken up companions mixed into the ground: but it's a mistake that might be forgiven.
Guy SajerI get so much inspiration from my travels, but I also started an exercise where I write down so many words every week. Then I begin crossing them off. We create a grid of words and also images, but words for me are more ample because you can interpret them your own way.
Francisco CostaI use the [vulgar] words because apparently these words do not corrupt morally. I'm from the street in New York, hung around in a tough neighborhood. It was common to curse, you make your point. It's a very effective language. I try not to overdo it. It's never to shock. I know where it fits, it's never to shock. There's no shock value left in words.
George CarlinWhat 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.
Juliana SpahrLetters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent; for they introduce words by the eye, not by the ear.
Isidore of SevilleAn image is a bridge between evoked emotion and conscious knowledge; words are the cables that hold up the bridge. Images are more direct, more immediate than words, and closer to the unconscious. Picture language precedes thinking in words; the metaphorical mind precedes analytical consciousness.
Gloria E. AnzaldรบaIf you know that everything comes from the mind, don't become attached. Once attached, you're unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire Canon becomes so much prose. It's thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind. Understanding comes in midsentence. What good are doctrines? The ultimate Truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They're not the Way. The Way is wordless. Words are illusions. . . . Don't cling to appearances, and you'll break through all barriers. . . .
BodhidharmaHappy," I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I have never quite understood. Most people who deal in words donโt have much faith in them and I am no exception โ especially the big ones like Happy and Love and Honest and Strong. They are too elusive and far to relative when you compare them to sharp, mean little words like Punk and Cheap and Phony. I feel at home with these, because theyโre scrawny and easy to pin, but the big ones are tough and it takes either a priest or a fool to use them with any confidence.
Hunter S. ThompsonI'm trying to get good message out to the people. It's like the scriptures because you know what the scriptures are in the bible. Words of Jah, words of Christ, words of Rasta and everything that's righteous are in the scriptures unto I and I.
SizzlaThe long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."
Gilbert K. ChestertonWords. I'm surrounding by thousands of words. Maybe millions...Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs...I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.
Sharon M. DraperWhat words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same.
Antonio PorchiaI'm quite interested in what words can be, if it's very few words, and it's a kind of club track but it has a sort of uplifting or spiritual kind of feeling to it. Somehow, something bigger than just the words on the page happens when you hear it all together. Sometimes I notice when I'm DJing, I put on a lot of tracks that feature vocals. I guess for me, it's just from growing up loving songs, so maybe I'm geared slightly more towards dance music that features a song element.
Alexis TaylorHowever, as words become particularized, and as men begin - in however small a way - to use them in personal, arbitrary ways, so their transformation into art begins. It was words of this kind that, descending on me like a swarm of winged insects, seized on my individuality and sought to shut me up within it. Nevertheless, despite the enemy's depredations upon my person, I turned their universality - at once a weapon and a weakness - back on them, and to some extent succeeded in using words to universalize to my own individuality.
Yukio MishimaI wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something she could not put into words - something prior to words that she could not grasp within herself and which therefore had no hope of ever turning into words.
Haruki MurakamiWithout precise meanings behind words, politicians and elites can obscure reality and condition people to reflexively associate certain words with positive or negative perceptions. In other words, unpleasant facts can be hidden behind purposely meaningless language.
Ron PaulLearning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.
Elizabeth GilbertThe secret art of inviting happiness The miraculous medicine of all diseases Just for today, do not anger Do not worry and be filled with gratitude Devote yourself to your work. Be kind to people. Every morning and evening, join your hands in prayer. Pray these words to your heart and chant these words with your mouth Usui Reiki Treatment for the improvement of body and mind
Mikao UsuiI always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.
Ken HensleyA mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.
George OrwellIn Spanish it is very difficult to make things flow, because words are over-long. But in English, you have light words.
Jorge Luis BorgesDon't just read words,' he would tell her as he held up the latest story, 'devour them. Let the words create new worlds.
Janette RallisonAs if he was beating me to the punch, his words living forever, while I was left speechless, no rebuttal, no words left to say.
Sarah DessenI love wine, I love wine reps, I love everything about the drinking world. In fact, as a recovering alcoholic, I adore the drinking world. I can't participate in it any longer and the only thing I don't like are people who don't listen to the words that are coming out of someone else's mouth. Which is why I try very hard to listen to the words that are coming out of someone's mouth.
Andrew ZimmernWords are not truth. Truth is like the moon, and words are like my finger. I can point to the moon with my finger, but my finger is not the moon. Do you need my finger to see the moon?
HuinengThus, words being symbols of ideas, we can collect ideas by collecting words. The fellow who said he tried reading the dictionary but couldn't get the hang of the story simply missed the point: namely, that it is a collection of short stories.
James Webb YoungWords have power. Speak positively and positive things will happen to you. Speak negatively and negative things will happen to you. Choose positive words.
Kel MitchellIf I do, I say so. That's the only way out of that. If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life... it's the magic words "I don't know." I mean, there are certain basic principles, like the dignity of the individual and the individual's responsibility, and certain basic economic principles, like how when something costs less, more of it will be consumed... There are certain things that I feel pretty confident about.
P. J. O'RourkeOut of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge. Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all.
Winston ChurchillBut words have been used too often; touched and turned, and left exposed to the dust of the street. The words we seek hang close to the tree. We come at dawn and find them sweet beneath the leaf.
Virginia WoolfHow does the [New York] Times treat White pathology? They reported an epidemic of heroin addiction in the Philadelphia suburbs. which included emergency admissions and overdoses; these White people in the suburbs were doing heroin like it was going out of style. I counted the words: the article consisted of 200 words. "Heroin Epidemic" in the back section. Out here in California, the typical drug addict is a housewife or suburban White woman.
Ishmael ReedIt's an unnecessary burden to try to think of words and also worry at the same time whether they're the right words.
Peter ElbowCarefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny.
Mahatma GandhiWords can enhance experience, but they can also take so much away. We see an insect and at once we abstract certain characteristics and classify it - a fly. And in that very cognitive exercise, part of the wonder is gone. Once we have labeled the things around us we do not bother to look at them so carefully. Words are part of our rational selves, and to abandon them for a while is to give freer reign to our intuitive selves.
Jane GoodallAvoid fancy words....If you admire fancy words, if every sky is beauteous, every blonde curvaceous, every intelligent child prodigious, if you are tickled by discombobulate, you will have bad time Reminder 14.
William Strunk, Jr.You're going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words, that matter.
Nicholas SparksWhen the Son on the Cross promises paradise in his company to the good thief, when he promises the future feast in Heaven to the Apostles, when he speaks of the kingdom of the Father, he is always pointing toward eternity. However brief and close to the earth his words sound, they echo throughout infinite eternity and permeate the faith of his followers with their eternal content. He knows what he speaks of, what he brings with him and what he promises; and he can convey it to those who know it not. The very words he uses are designed to awaken in them a new sense: the sense of the eternal.
Adrienne von SpeyrThe Dancer believes that his art has something to say which cannot be expressed in words or in any other way than by dancing... there are times when the simple dignity of movement can fulfill the function of a volume of words. There are movements which impinge upon the nerves with a strength that is incomparable, for movement has power to stir the senses and emotions, unique in itself. This is the dancer's justification for being, and his reason for searching further for deeper aspects of his art.
Doris HumphreyAnti-Zionists, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It was Thomas Hobbes who, anticipating semantics, pointed out that words are counters, not coins; that the wise man looks through them to reality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism and commonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting.
Milton SteinbergI think of translations as passing some scholarly smell test: you can read the words of the translation and be reasonably sure of what the words are in the original.
Christian WimanI feel that the act of writing, in and of itself, is a tool towards probing that which you wouldn't without that pen in your hand. It's a strange, almost neurological phenomenon, and the words seem to generate more words - but only when you're writing. You can't do it in your head.
Paul AusterSalvation is in Christ, not the Holy Ghost; our Blessed Lord redeemed us and the Holy Ghost is his messenger to carry the message of redeeming grace into the hearts of men. Thus, the joyous words spoken by the Holy Ghost are in reality the words of Christ. The Spirit is simply the one who delivers the word.
Bruce R. McConkie