Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist
Speech, quoted in The Times (February 15, 1923).
Other works
Variant: Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Quotes about wording page 18
“We are so used to releasing words. We don't know what to do with them if they stay.”
David Levithan The Realm of Possibility
Source: The Realm of Possibility
Patrick Lencioni (1965) American writer
Source: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Source: Essays Including Essays, First & Second Series, English Traits, Nature & Considerations by the Way
“If I knew words enough, I could write the longest love letter in the world and never get tired”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter
Source: The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.”
Henry Miller book Tropic of Capricorn
Tropic of Capricorn http://books.google.com/books?id=_HAhCxNs-QUC&lpg=PA176&q="Confusion+is+a+word+we+have+invented+for+an+order+which+is+not+understood"&pg=PA176#v=onepage (1939)
Julie Garwood (1946) American writer
Source: The Secret
Juliet Marillier book Wildwood Dancing
Variant: If a man has to say trust me, Gogu conveyed, it's a sure sign you cannot. Trust him, that is. Trust is a thing you know without words.
Source: Wildwood Dancing
“We cannot be too careful about the words we use; we start out using them and they end up using us.”
Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) American translator
Source: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology
“The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'cheque enclosed.”
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist
“How to put this feeling, this certainty, into something as limited as words?”
Eileen Wilks (1952) fiction writer
Source: On the Prowl
Amin Maalouf book In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
Source: In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (1956) novelist, short story writer, poet, and essayist
Source: The Palace of Illusions
“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: 'What good is it?”
Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist
“What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.”
Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun
Variant: What we needed were not words and promises but a steady accumulation of small realities.
Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun
“O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away”
John Clare (1793–1864) English poet
Source: Poems Chiefly from Manuscript
May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist
“When he moves, a streetlight stabs him, and the words flow out like blood.”
Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author
Source: I Am the Messenger
“I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me, you’d better go”
F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned
Source: The Beautiful and Damned
“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.”
Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale
Source: The Thirteenth Tale
L.J. Smith (1965) American author
Source: Dark Reunion
“The only use she has for the word fun is to make the word funeral.”
Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer
Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care
Variant: When you showed someone how you felt, it was fesh and honest. Whe you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation.
Source: Handle with Care
“His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer
Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
“In the phrase ' human being,' the word 'being' is much more important than the word 'human.”
Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
As quoted in Charting the Candidates '72 (1972) by Ronald Van Doren, p. 7
1940s–present
Context: The state — or, to make the matter more concrete, the government — consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.
“Achilles weeps. He cradles me, and will not eat, nor speak a word other than my name.”
Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles
Source: The Song of Achilles
Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain
Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain
“Love in all eight tones and all five semitones of the word's full octave”
Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist
Gena Showalter (1975) American writer
Source: The Darkest Passion
“The injury of words.
Yes, the brutality of words.”
Markus Zusak book The Book Thief
Source: The Book Thief
“Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words.”
Francois Rabelais (1494–1553) major French Renaissance writer
“said Luke, as if it were the filthiest word he knew.”
Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes
Source: City of Ashes
David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist
Variant: The true thoughts that go on inside us are just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of, at most, one tiny little part of us at any given instant.
Source: Oblivion
“Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits.”
John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher
Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
“We walked along the river with the words streaming behind us like ribbons in the night.”
Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees
Source: The Secret Life of Bees (2002)
Patti Callahan Henry American writer
Source: Between The Tides
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
“Truth is in things, and not in words.”
Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet
