Motivational Quotes

Words

Bu is a word that cools many a warm impulse, stifles many a kindly thought, puts a dead stop to many a brotherly deed. No one would ever love his neighbor as himself if he listened to all the Buts that could be said.

- Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

Best Quotes about Words

I find it difficult to believe that words have no meaning in themselves, hard as I try. Habits of a lifetime are not lightly thrown aside.

Chase, Stuart

The 500 most commonly used words have an average of 28 meanings each.

For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice.

Eliot, T. S.

It is with a word as with an arrow -- once let it loose and it does not return.

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.

Ibsen, Henrik

An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop.... I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen.

Twain, Mark

Why do social workers use five-syllable words when dealing with juvenile delinquents?

I don't give a damn for man that can spell a word only one way.

Twain, Mark

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

Hemingway, Ernest

10.

The safest words are always those which bring us most directly to facts.

Parkhurst, Charles H.

11.

A wise man hears one word and understands two.

Proverb, Yiddish

12.

The two most beautiful words in the English language are: Check Enclosed.

Parker, Dorothy

13.

My general theory since 1971 has been that the word is literally a virus, and that it has not been recognized as such because it has achieved a state of relatively stable symbiosis with its human host; that is to say, the word virus (the Other Half) has established itself so firmly as an accepted part of the human organism that it can now sneer at gangster viruses like smallpox and turn them in to the Pasteur Institute.

Burroughs, William S.

14.

Political correctness is simply a speed bump in the traffic of truth, free thought and speech.

15.

Words are made for a certain exactness of thought, as tears are for a certain degree of pain. What is least distinct cannot be named; what is clearest is unutterable.

Daumal, Rene

16.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

Churchill, Winston

17.

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

18.

Words are all we have.

Beckett, Samuel

19.

Blessed are they who have nothing to say and who cannot be persuaded to say it.

Lowell, James Russell

20.

We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted.

Haldeman, Harold Robbins

21.

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

Hemingway, Ernest

22.

One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

Waugh, Evelyn

23.

I haven't much opinion of words. They're apt to set fire to a dry tongue, that's what I say.

Glasgow, Ellen

24.

The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

25.

The supply of words in the world market is plentiful but the demand is falling. Let deeds follow words now.

Walesa, Lech

26.

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

Lao-Tzu

27.

On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.

Phillips, Wendell

28.

Please God, make my words today sweet and tender, for tomorrow I may have to eat them.

29.

You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.

Carnegie, Dale

30.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

Spencer, Herbert

31.

Words represent your intellect. The sound, gesture and movement represent your feelings.

Fripp, Patricia

32.

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.

Reid, Thomas

33.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours.

Idle, Eric

34.

Words are tools which automatically carve concepts out of experience.

Huxley, Julian S.

35.

You can stroke people with words.

36.

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

Wright, Steven

37.

Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.

Yeats, William Butler

38.

A single word often betrays a great design.

Racine, Jean

39.

A new word is like a fresh seed sewn on the ground of the discussion.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

40.

I have never been hurt by what I have not said.

Coolidge, Calvin

41.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

Rohn, Jim

42.

As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language; every human use of words that is joyful, or honest or new, because experience is new... But as a Black poet and writer, I hate words that cancel my name and my history and the freedom of my future: I hate the words that condemn and refuse the language of my people in America.

Jordan, June

43.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

44.

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back.

Kraus, Karl

45.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

Proverb, Chinese

46.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

Twain, Mark