quotations about words
Word -- that invisible dagger.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
Words [are] more beautiful than a found fall leaf.
WILLIAM H. GASS
A Temple of Texts
Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
Words are not necessary to one's experience of the true life.
DON DELILLO
Point Omega
I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
The beautiful word begets the beautiful deed.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
Words can carry any burden we wish. All that's required is agreement and a tradition upon which to build.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
The words of God are deeds.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
One mild word ... will quench more heat than a bucket of water.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Words are but the bannerets of a great army, a few bits of waving color here and there; thoughts are the main body of the footman that march unseen below.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
If we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss
You know, without my telling you, how sometimes a word or name eludes you, and you seek it through running ghosts of shadow -- leaping at it, lying in wait for it to spring upon it, spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound: until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest, you hear it, see it flash among the branches, and scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it.
CONRAD AIKEN
The House of Dust
Last words are only words.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Suttree
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
A word in earnest is as good as a speech.
CHARLES DICKENS
Bleak House
It's tremendously hard work. Yes, I love arranging the words and having them fall on the ear the right way and you know you're not quite there and you're redoing it and redoing it and there's a wonderful thrill to it. But it is hard.
ELIZABETH STROUT
Newsweek, July 13, 2009
What so wild as words are?
ROBERT BROWNING
A Woman's Last Word
Desires and words go hand in hand ... they are moved by the same intention to join together, to communicate, to establish bridges between people, whether they are spoken or written.
LAURA ESQUIVEL
Swift as Desire
I am not for imposing any sense on your words: you are at liberty to explain them as you please. Only, I beseech you, make me understand something by them.
GEORGE BERKELEY
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous
Though I do keep lists of words that catch my attention for a variety of reasons, they rarely make it into poems, not infrequently because I lose the lists.
WALTER BARGEN
"An Interview with Walter Bargen", BkMk Press