Motivational Quotes

Words

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

- Proverb, Chinese

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.

There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them --isn't this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual?

Havel, Vaclav

Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster.

Connolly, Cyril

Strong words are required for weak principles.

Horton, Doug

If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy.

Ellison, Ralph

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

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

Glasgow, Ellen

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

Platen

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

Ibsen, Henrik

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Stalin, Joseph

16.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

17.

Without words to objectify and categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, we cannot evolve a tradition of what is real in the world.

Hubbard, Ruth

18.

A wise man hears one word and understands two.

Proverb, Yiddish

19.

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

Haldeman, Harold Robbins

20.

Each group of words is processed by the brain as a single thought. And because the words are viewed in context, you retain them more accurately than if you processed the words individually.

Saperstein, Rose

21.

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

Proverb, Spanish

22.

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

Diller, Phyllis

23.

I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.

Churchill, Winston

24.

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

25.

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

Twain, Mark

26.

Words from the thread on which we string our experiences.

Huxley, Aldous

27.

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

28.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

29.

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

Proverb, Chinese

30.

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

Waugh, Evelyn

31.

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

32.

Words are all we have.

Beckett, Samuel

33.

Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.

Cather, Willa

34.

A single word often betrays a great design.

Racine, Jean

35.

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

Lowell, James Russell

36.

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

Gladden, W.

37.

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

Mohammed

38.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

Spencer, Herbert

39.

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

Kirchenbaum

40.

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

Lao-Tzu

41.

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

Hemingway, Ernest

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

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

Kraus, Karl

46.

To be brief is almost a condition of being inspired.

Santayana, George

47.

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

Idle, Eric

48.

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

49.

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

Coolidge, Calvin

50.

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

Wright, Steven