Motivational Quotes

Words

Words will not fail when the matter is well considered.

- Horace

Best Quotes about Words

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.

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

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

Strong words are required for weak principles.

Horton, Doug

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

Hemingway, Ernest

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

A wise man hears one word and understands two.

Proverb, Yiddish

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Zinsser, William

10.

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

Reid, Thomas

11.

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

Platen

12.

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

13.

Words are alive; cut them and they bleed.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

15.

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

Wright, Steven

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Walesa, Lech

19.

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

20.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

21.

The wise weigh their words on a scale with gold.

22.

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

23.

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

Twain, Mark

24.

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

Diller, Phyllis

25.

The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.

Mohammed

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Print is the sharpest and the strongest weapon of our party.

Stalin, Joseph

30.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called weasel words. When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a weasel word after another there is nothing left of the other.

Roosevelt, Theodore

31.

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

Gladden, W.

32.

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

Fripp, Patricia

33.

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

34.

Good words are worth a thousand pictures.

35.

Words from the thread on which we string our experiences.

Huxley, Aldous

36.

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

37.

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

Parkhurst, Charles H.

38.

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

Card, Orson Scott

39.

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

Adams, John

40.

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