Quotes about wording
page 5

“A word after a word after a word is power.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

“Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

“When words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“Emotions are what make us human. Make us real. The word 'emotion' stands for energy in motion. Be truthful about your emotions, and use your mind and emotions in your favor, not against yourself.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Truth

“Few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later--no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover or how much we learn or forget--we will return.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) (2001)

Books, World, Way, Thinking

“Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Usenet

“POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord?
HAMLET: Words, words, words.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Reading

“Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

“No more words. We know them all, all the words that should not be said. But you have made my world more perfect.”

Terry Pratchett book Nation

Source: Nation

World, Perfection, Goodbye

“Never forget the nine most important words of any family-

I love you.
You are beautiful.
Please forgive me.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Love, Family, Beauty, Forgiveness

“You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.”

Milan Kundera book Identity

Identity (1998), p. 78

“Tears are words that need to be written.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Tear, Sad, Heartbreaking

“The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:]

It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Women, Men, Silence

“This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,
Which gives men stomach to digest his words
With better appetite.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

Men

“Speak English!' said the Eaglet. 'I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and I don't believe you do either!”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

“Girls aren't beautiful, they're pretty. Beautiful is too heavy a word to assign to a girl. Women are beautiful because their faces show that they know they have lost something and picked up something else.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Smile, You're Traveling: Black Coffee Blues Part 3

Women, Beauty, Girl

“How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words!”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

Source: Speak, Memory

“There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by my self.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“Making others happy, through kindness of speech and sincerity of right advice, is a sign of true greatness. To hurt another soul by sarcastic words, looks, or suggestions, is despicable.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Source: Where There is Light: Insight and Inspiration for Meeting Life's Challenges

Happiness, Soul, Hurt, Sincerity

“I want to love you simply, in words not spoken: tinder to the flame which transforms it to ash
I want to love you simply, in signs not expressed: clouds to the rain which make them evanescent (Aku Ingin-I Want)”

Sapardi Djoko Damono (1940) Indonesian poet

Love

“People say I love you all the time - when they say, ‘take an umbrella, it’s raining,’ or ‘hurry back,’ or even ‘watch out, you’ll break your neck.’ There are hundreds of ways of wording it - you just have to listen for it, my dear.”

John Patrick The Curious Savage

Source: The Curious Savage

Love, People, Way, Time

“What do you think dignity's all about?'

The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public.”

Kazuo Ishiguro The Remains of the Day

Source: The Remains of the Day

Thinking, Clothes

“If you're not ready to die for it, take the word "freedom" out of your vocabulary.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Chicago Defender (28 November 1962).
Attributed
Variant: It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.

Freedom

“Don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

“Soon I'll find the right words, they'll be very simple.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Some of the Dharma (1997)
Source: Sometimes paraphrased as "One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple" or "Someday I will find the right words … ", and sometimes misattributed to The Dharma Bums rather than to Some of the Dharma.

“Bran was the only person I knew who could use words like "blackguard" and make them sound like swear words-but then he could have said "bunny rabbit" in that tone of voice and weaken my spine with the same shiver of fear.”

Patricia Briggs book Moon Called

Source: Moon Called

Fear, Personality

“And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairy tale.'
Well, that’s harmless, isn’t it?'
Yeah, but in fairy tales, when someone dies… it’s just a word.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Life, Thinking

“Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.”

Carol Shields (1935–2003) American author

Source: The Republic of Love

Books, Reading

“I want the following word: splendor, splendor is fruit in all its succulence, fruit without sadness. I want vast distances. My savage intuition of myself.”

Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) Brazilian writer

Source: The Stream of Life

Sadness

“Inspiration is a word used by people who aren't really doing anything.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

People

“When you can have anything you want by uttering a few words, the goal matters not, only the journey to it.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Rhunon
Source: Eldest (2005)

“Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth…. Through words and concepts we shall never reach beyond the wall off relations, to some sort of fabulous primal ground of things.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Source: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Truth

“Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless…”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan / A Woman of No Importance / An Ideal Husband / The Importance of Being Earnest / Salomé

Life

“Sometimes I'm so deeply buried under self-reproaches that I long for a word of comfort to help me dig myself out again.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Help

“A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Hope

“The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.”

Jane Kenyon (1947–1995) American poet, translator

People, Truth, Beauty, Way

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1964)
Context: I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
Context: I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Love, Truth, Reality, Evil

“Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.”

Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) American teacher and writer

Misattributed
Source: Concord Days

Friendship

“Your time on this earth is a gift to be used wisely. Don't squander your words or your thoughts. Consider that even the simplest actions you take for your lives matter beyond measure… and they matter forever.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Source: The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective

Time

“…She was, obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Women, Books, Soul

“Don’t be in too much of a rush to be published. There is enormous value in listening and reading and writing—and then putting your words away for weeks or months–and then returning to your work to polish it some more.”

Sharon Creech (1945) American writer of children's novels

Reading

“Words are loaded pistols.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons, after taking office as Prime Minister (13 May 1940) This has often been misquoted in the form: "I have nothing to offer but blood, sweat and tears ..."
The Official Report, House of Commons (5th Series), 13 May 1940, vol. 360, c. 1502. Audio records of the speech do spare out the "It is" before the in the beginning of the "Victory"-Part.
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Context: You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
Context: I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.' We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Victory

“I don't kick a man when he's down, unless I'm the one who put him down in the first place. I don't put him down unless he deserves it. And I don't break my word if I give it. So I'll give you my word.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Northern Lights

“We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

World

“I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

from: Joan Miro: Selected Writings and Interviews, M.Rowell, Thames and Hudson, 1987
1940 - 1960

Music, Color

“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Variant: Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

“The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the words with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to those whose nest whence he sprang.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Bird

“Tradition:' one of those words conservative people use as a shortcut to thinking.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

Source: Transmetropolitan, Vol. 4: The New Scum

People, Thinking

“Very' is such a strong word…”

Derek Landy (1974) Irish children's writer

Strong

“Words are finite organs of the infinite mind.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

Source: Nature

“Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Training

“Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Fools

“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Speak, Memory

Source: Speak, Memory

Time

“Lessee… he'd gone off after the funeral and gotten drunk. No, not drunk, another word, ended with "er." Drunker. that was it.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“as they die, the ones we love, we lose our witnesses, our watchers, those who know and understand the tiny little meaningless patterns, those words drawn in water with a stick. And there is nothing left but the endless flow.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Love, Understanding, Water

“No” is a word that must never be negotiated, because the person who chooses not to hear it is trying to control you.”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Personality

“It's impossible for me to say one word about all that music has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be understood?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Life, Hope, Music

“People to whom sin is just a matter of words, to them salvation is just words too.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

Source: As I Lay Dying (1930)

People

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Love, God, People, World

“I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her

even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Love, Fear, Sleep, Night

“one word could change the whole world”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

World, Change

“He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Understanding, Silence, Deep

“Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. I, st. 7
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Source: The Ballad Of Reading Gaol

Love, Kiss

“The words went round and round and round in my mind and my body, until I knew they were no longer my words but something that had been carved into my heart.
And now my soul was crying.”

Tracey Emin (1963) English artist, one of the group known as Britartists or Young British Artists

Source: Strangeland

Soul, Heart, Cry

“I am still in the land of the dying; I shall be in the land of the living soon. (his last words)”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

“You couldn't say 'I had orders.' You couldn't say 'It's not fair.' No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. […] Not 'Thou Shalt Not'. Say 'I Will Not'.”

Terry Pratchett book Feet of Clay

Source: Feet of Clay

“The ten most dangerous words in the English language are "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Remarks to Future Farmers of America http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/072888c.htm (28 July 1988) <br class="br">1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

Help

“It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

Chance

“What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: King Henry IV, Part 1

Feeling

“I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Oyster Bay, NY http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (7 July 1915) <br class="br">1910s

Perfection

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more, nor less.”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

“What does it say?" I said, when I had. She said, "It is filled with all the words for how I want you… Look.”

Sarah Waters book Fingersmith

Source: Fingersmith

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Variant: The grief that does not speak whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break.
Source: Macbeth

Heart

“The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)
Context: It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colours put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.<!-- Also quoted in Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction (2007), edited by Richard Marshall, p. 13

Color, Way, Painting

“How clever are you, my dear! You never mean a single word you say!”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“In the words of the philosopher Sceptum, the founder of my profession: am I going to get paid for this?”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

“There is not even a Scrabble word for how bad I feel.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Feeling

“So far as I can remember there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 110
Context: Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.

Intelligence

“Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Source: Aleph

Sadness, Tear, Joy

“Let me try once more," Milo said in an effort to explain. "In other words--"
"You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Bird, Effort

“The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies