“Words from empty words they sever—
Words of Truth from words of Pride.”

— James Clerk Maxwell

Part III Poems, "Reflection from Various Surfaces" (April 18, 1853)
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)
Context: By the hollow mauntain-side
Questions strange I shout for ever,
While echoes far and wide
Seem to mock my vain endeavour;
Still I shout, for though they never
Cast my borrowed voice aside,
Words from empty words they sever—
Words of Truth from words of Pride.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 14, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Words from empty words they sever— Words of Truth from words of Pride." by James Clerk Maxwell?

James Clerk Maxwell27

Scottish physicist 1831–1879

Related quotes

“It was a common saying of Myson that men ought not to investigate things from words, but words from things; for that things are not made for the sake of words, but words for things.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Myson, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

“Where words come out from the depth of truth”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Gitanjali http://www.spiritualbee.com/gitanjali-poems-of-tagore/ (1912) Context: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

“Words take their meaning from the original word.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

All Will be Well (2004)

“And empty words are evil.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

Source: The Odyssey

“Words are but empty thanks.”

Colley Cibber (1671–1757) British poet laureate

Woman's Wit, Act V (1697).

“But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays,
Is the word that comes from the heart.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

The Word
Poetry quotes, New Thought Pastels (1913)
Context: p>You may choose your word like a connoisseur,
And polish it up with art,
But the word that sways, and stirs, and stays,
Is the word that comes from the heart.You may work on your word a thousand weeks,
But it will not glow like one
That all unsought, leaps forth white hot,
When the fountains of feeling run.</p

“Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half-empty one are contained in that word.”

Alan Simpson (1931) American politician

Alan Simpson (b. 1912), an English born educator who became a U.S. citizen in 1954, in "The Marks of an Educated Man" in Readings for Liberal Education (1962), edited by by Louis Glenn Locke, William Merriam Gibson, and George Warren Arms, p. 47.
Misattributed