Motivational Quotes

Words

Our lives are fed by kind words and gracious behavior. We are nourished by expressions like excuse me and other such simple courtesies... Rudeness, the absence of the sacrament of consideration, is but another mark that our time-is-money society is lacking in spirituality, if not also in its enjoyment of life.

- Hays, Ed

Best Quotes about Words

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

Words will not fail when the matter is well considered.

Horace

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

Card, Orson Scott

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

Twain, Mark

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

A word from the mouth is like a stone from a sling.

Proverb, Spanish

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

Parkhurst, Charles H.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

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

10.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Adams, Henry Brooks

11.

You can stroke people with words.

12.

Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.

Joubert, Joseph

13.

Good words are worth a thousand pictures.

14.

When I look at you, the wheels of time stand still vs. Your face could stop a clock

15.

Keep your words sweet -- you may have to eat them. I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

Grellet, Stephan

16.

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

17.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

Byron, Lord

18.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

19.

The written word can be erased -- not so with the spoken word.

20.

There's no sentence that's too short in the eyes of God.

Zinsser, William

21.

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

Wright, Steven

22.

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

Ibsen, Henrik

23.

Hays, Ed

24.

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

Haldeman, Harold Robbins

25.

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

Walesa, Lech

26.

Strong words are required for weak principles.

Horton, Doug

27.

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

Eliot, T. S.

28.

Words are loaded pistols.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

29.

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

30.

Words can have no single fixed meaning. Like wayward electrons, they can spin away from their initial orbit and enter a wider magnetic field. No one owns them or has a proprietary right to dictate how they will be used.

Lehman, David

31.

The wise weigh their words on a scale with gold.

32.

A wise man hears one word and understands two.

Proverb, Yiddish

33.

I've been asked to say a couple of words about my husband, Fang. How about short and cheap?

Diller, Phyllis

34.

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.

Renard, Jules

35.

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

Reid, Thomas

36.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

37.

What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? A stick!

Kirchenbaum

38.

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

Glasgow, Ellen

39.

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

Proverb, Chinese

40.

Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why --but the editorialists forget it --terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.

Berger, John

41.

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

42.

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

Twain, Mark

43.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

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

45.

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

Phillips, Wendell