Motivational Quotes

Words

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

- Glasgow, Ellen

Best Quotes about Words

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

Eliot, T. S.

Good words are worth a thousand pictures.

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 are loaded pistols.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

Nothing we use or hear or touch can be expressed in words that equal what we are given by the senses.

Arendt, Hannah

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

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

Words are tools which automatically carve concepts out of experience.

Huxley, Julian S.

Our great men have written words of wisdom to be used when hardship must be faced. Life obliges us with hardship so the words of wisdom shouldn't go to waste.

L'Chiam

10.

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

Reid, Thomas

11.

Words will not fail when the matter is well considered.

Horace

12.

Gentle words, quiet words, are after all the most powerful words. They are more convincing, more compelling, more prevailing.

Gladden, W.

13.

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

Wright, Steven

14.

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

Walesa, Lech

15.

A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words... the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt.

Twain, Mark

16.

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

Glasgow, Ellen

17.

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

Kirchenbaum

18.

A single word often betrays a great design.

Racine, Jean

19.

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

20.

The words of the world want to make sentences.

Bachelard, Gaston

21.

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

Tocqueville, Alexis De

22.

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

Haldeman, Harold Robbins

23.

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.

24.

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

Rohn, Jim

25.

A word once uttered can never be recalled.

Horace

26.

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

27.

Like an arrow to its mark flies the word good man's word.

Platen

28.

To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.

Santayana, George

29.

In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.

Haldane, John B. S.

30.

The word-coining genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping.

Woolf, Virginia

31.

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

Lao-Tzu

32.

A wise man hears one word and understands two.

Proverb, Yiddish

33.

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.

Adams, John

34.

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

Idle, Eric

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

38.

All words are part true and part false.

Kahn, Master

39.

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

40.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

41.

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

42.

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

Parker, Dorothy

43.

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

Twain, Mark

44.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

45.

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

Parkhurst, Charles H.

46.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

Churchill, Winston

47.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

Spencer, Herbert

48.

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

Proverb, Spanish

49.

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

50.

I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

Bachelard, Gaston