quotations about words
All words are pegs to hang ideas on.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The word was -- civilization!
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Don't gobblefunk around with words.
ROALD DAHL
The BFG
Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Cave
To reason with poorly chosen words is like using a pair of scales with inaccurate weights.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
An Art of Living
If words suffice not, blows must follow.
AESOP
"The Farmer and the Cranes", Aesop's Fables
Into the cities my people had gathered. They had become dizzy with words. Words had choked them. They could not breathe.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
"The Cornfields", Mid-American Chants
Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The American Notebooks, 1848
There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Principles of Success in Literature
Our generation throws a lot of slang around only to demand that other words be chosen with a pinpoint precision. Words today are both malleable as silly putty and hard as bricks.
ISABEL DRUKKER
"Sticks and stones", Campus Times, April 2, 2017
Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.
JOHNNY CARSON
The Tonight Show
Wondrous depth of Thy words! whose surface, behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth. O my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honor, and a trembling of love.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
The act of saying that things exist that cannot be described in words shakes a universe where words are the supreme belief.
FRANK HERBERT
Heretics of Dune
There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
You will hear words
old and spent and useless
like costumes left over
from yesterday's parties.
CESARE PAVESE
"The Cats Will Know"
Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk, speak to me Babel, that I may strive to assemble of all these syllables a single word before the purpose of speech is gone.
CONRAD AIKEN
"This Image or Another"
Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Equinox
How truly language must be regarded as a hindrance to thought, though the necessary instrument of it, we shall clearly perceive on remembering the comparative force with which simple ideas are communicated by signs. To say, "Leave the room," is less expressive than to point to the door. Place a finger on the lips is more forcible than whispering, "Do not speak." A beck of the hand is better than, "Come here." No phrase can convey the idea of surprise so vividly as opening the eyes and raising the eyebrows. A shrug of the shoulders would lose much by translation into words.
HERBERT SPENCER
The Philosophy of Style
It seems that slang words are generated much more quickly in the Internet era, with memes pushing all sorts of words out into the world for quick consumption and even quicker disappearance. After a short space of time, these words are quickly replaced by a new wave of memes, and the cycle begins once again. But while I'm glad that slang words like "on fleek" and "bae" are slowly tapering out, I hope that phrases like "throwing shade" and "yas queen" stick around until I'm old and gray, so I can say them to children without sounding like an outdated relic. Because, you know, those are my priorities.
MEHAK ANWAR
"5 Slang Words That Will Never Go Out Of Style, Because It's Always Been Cool To Say 'Cool'", Bustle, February 10, 2016