Quotes about wording
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“Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.”

Lisa See book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Source: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Books, Reading

“Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Reality

“Words are only painted fire, a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it away to the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.”

Mark Twain book A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Painting

“Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it."

"No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

“Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.”

Mark Twain book Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

Source: Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc

Music, Clothes

“Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.

-Words of Muad'dib by Princess Irulan.”

Frank Herbert book Dune Messiah

Source: Dune Messiah

Suffering, Time, Princess

“There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people who don't
see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Friendship, Happiness, People

“When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Source: Poems New and Collected

Silence, Past, Future

“Not a word passes between us, not because we have nothing to say, but because we don't have to say anything - that is how, it is between people who are each other's first memories”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

People, Memory

“The librarians were mysterious. It was said they could tell what book you needed just by looking at you, and they could take your voice away with a word.”

Terry Pratchett book Wintersmith

Source: Wintersmith

Books

“How do you regret one of the best nights of your entire life? You don't. You remember every word, every look. Even when it hurts, you still remember.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Life, Hurt, Night

“So this is what I am

Pondering his eyes that could not
Conceive that I was a creature to run from

I who have always believed too much in words”

W.S. Merwin (1927–2019) American poet

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words.”

Vladimir Nabokov book The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Source: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Bird, Heart

“How long have you been holding those words in your head, hoping to use them?”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Source: Lethal People

Hope

“Words without experience are meaningless.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

“There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart -
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge,
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

Heart, Clothes

“Teachers wondered why I didn't speak up more in class. Why would I when I knew how precarious words could be, how betraying they were, how vulnerable they made you?”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Teachers

“My Diego: Mirror of the night Your eyes green swords inside my flesh. waves between our hands. All of you in a space full of sounds — in the shade and in the light. You were called AUXOCHROME the one who captures color. I CHROMOPHORE — the one who gives color. You are all the combinations of numbers. life. My wish is to understand lines form shades movement. You fulfill and I receive. Your word travels the entirety of space and reaches my cells which are my stars then goes to yours which are my light.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Life, Color, Travel, Star

“To see evil and call it good, mocks God. Worse, it makes goodness meaningless. A word without meaning is an abomination, for when the word passes beyond understanding the very thing the word stands for passes out of the world and cannot be recalled.”

Stephen R. Lawhead book Arthur

Source: Arthur

God, World, Understanding, Evil

“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand."

- Anna Karenina {Anna Karenina}”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

Love, Understanding

“Only those moments count when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than to exchange a word with someone.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: The New Gods (1969)

“The words in this book are all phooey. When you say them, your lips will make slips and back flips and your tongue may end up in Saint Looey!”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Books

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.”

Sam Levenson (1911–1980) American journalist

Beauty, Knowledge, Deep, Happy

“Reality' is a word with many meanings.”

Peter Brook (1925) English theatre and film director and innovator

Source: The Empty Space: A Book About the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate

Reality, Goodbye

“Words are animals, alive with a will of their own”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Animals

“I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Life, Dependency

“When you pray, rather let your heart be without words then your words without heart.”

John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer and preacher

Variant: In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Heart

“Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

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

“Words make love with one another.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Love, Making love

“Love is only a word, until we decide to let it possess us with all its force.
Love is only a word, until someone arrives to give it meaning.
Don't give up. Remember, it's always the last key on the key ring that opens the door.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Love

“Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.”

Frank Herbert book Chapterhouse: Dune

Source: Chapterhouse: Dune

“Music is only love looking for words.”

Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer

Love, Music

“Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Smile, Heart

“To say she was my girlfriend was absurd: no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend… I suppose I ought to have realize it’s ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.”

Robert Harris (1957) novelist

“If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.” — JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE”

Doreen Virtue (1958) American writer

Source: Angel Words: Visual Evidence of How Words Can Be Angels in Your Life

“It was not intended as a compliment. It was a confession. Now that I have made it, something seems to have gone out of me. Perhaps one should never put one's worship into words.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I've heard the word 'fear'. I simply choose to believe it doesn't apply to me.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Fear

“Music is love in search of a word.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Love, Music, Search

“I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Strong Opinions

Source: Strong Opinions (1973), p. 45
Context: To be quite candid — and what I am going to say now is something I have never said before, and I hope that it provokes a salutary chill — I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.

“If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loudly. Do not compound mispronunciation with inaudibility”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“… it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.”

Steve Martin book Shopgirl

Source: Shopgirl

Question, Heart, Hurt

“But now," says the Once-ler, "now that you're here, the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear. UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.”

Dr. Seuss The Lorax

Source: The Lorax

“By words the mind is winged.”

Aristophanés The Birds

Birds (414 BC) Context: Informer: My friend, I am asking you for wings, not for words. Pisthetaerus: It's just my words that gives you wings. Informer: And how can you give a man wings with your words? Pisthetaerus: They all start this way. [... ] Informer: So that words give wings? Pisthetaerus: Undoubtedly; words give wings to the mind and make a man soar to heaven. Thus I hope that my wise words will give you wings to fly to some less degrading trade. (tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Birds+1436)

“If words had weight, a single sentence from Death would have anchored a ship.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Death

“Reported as Oscar Wilde's last words on his death bed…
This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Death

“The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

Strong

“I am overwhelmed with things I ought to have written about and never found the proper words.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume One: 1915-1919

“When there's a moon the shadows in the house grow larger;
invisible hands draw back the curtains,
a pallid finger writes forgotten words on dust
of the piano…”

Yiannis Ritsos (1909–1990) Greek poet

Source: The Fourth Dimension

Drawing, Housing

“Books must be treated with respect, we feel that in our bones, because words have power. Bring enough words together they can bend space and time.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Books, Feeling, Time

“That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Heart, Dead

“I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.”

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

Source: 1930s, Education and the Social Order (1932), p. 31

School, History, Boy, Baby

“Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Appearance

“But, indeed, words are very rascals, since bonds [vows] disgraced them."
Viola: "Thy reason, man?"
Feste: "Troth [Truthfully], sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Falseness

“Everyone quoted it, it was full of so many words that they could not understand.”

Oscar Wilde book The Happy Prince

Source: The Happy Prince

Quotes, Understanding

“There was this about vampires : they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were… what was the word… deshabille. It meant untidy, but with bags and bags of style.”

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

“When reading a book, be very certain that you never go past a word you do not fully understand. The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has gone past a word that was not understood.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Books, Understanding, Study, Learning

“I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Way, Cooking, Clothes

“They think written words are even more powerful,’ whispered the toad. ‘They think all writing is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

Thinking

“Nothing has really happened unless it's been described [in words].”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these – ‘Chloe liked Olivia…’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Women, Reading

“I don't recommend shadow travel if you're scared of:
a) The dark
b) Cold shivers up your spine
c) Strange noises
d) Going so fast you feel like your face is peeling off
In other words, I thought it was awesome.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Travel, Feeling

“The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.”

Frank Herbert book Children of Dune

Source: Children of Dune

“Reading activates and exercises the mind.
Reading forces the mind to discriminate. From the beginning, readers have to recognize letters printed on the page, make them into words, the words into sentences, and the sentences into concepts.
Reading pushes us to use our imagination and makes us more creatively inclined.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Exercises, Imagination, Reading

“Thou weigh'st thy words before thou givest them breath.”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

“Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe:
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell;
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

Law, Hell, Strong

“In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison

Marriage, Forgiveness, Heart

“Val: Why do you go out there?
Sandra: Because dead people give such good advice.
Val: What advice do they give?
Sandra: Just one word- live!”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Source: Battle of Angels

People, Dead

“person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself, and is unworthy of respect.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Personality

“Written words can also sing.”

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1938) Kenyan writer

Source: Dreams in a Time of War

Singing

“If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

“A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones who need advice.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Stupidity, Funny

“I consist of body and soul - in the worlds of a child. And why shouldn't we speak like children? But the enlightened, the knowledgealbe would say: I am body through and through, nothing more; and the soul is just a word for something on the body.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Children, World, Soul

“Philosophy is written in this grand book, which stands continually open before our eyes (I say the 'Universe'), but can not be understood without first learning to comprehend the language and know the characters as it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is impossible to humanly understand a word; without these one is wandering in a dark labyrinth.”

Galileo Galilei book The Assayer

From Italian: La filosofia è scritta in questo grandissimo libro, che continuamente ci sta aperto innanzi agli occhi (io dico l'Universo), ma non si può intendere, se prima non il sapere a intender la lingua, e conoscer i caratteri ne quali è scritto. Egli è scritto in lingua matematica, e i caratteri son triangoli, cerchi ed altre figure geometriche, senza i quali mezzi è impossibile intenderne umanamente parola; senza questi è un aggirarsi vanamente per un oscuro labirinto.
Other translations:
Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written. This book is written in the mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.
The Assayer (1623), as translated by Thomas Salusbury (1661), p. 178, as quoted in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (2003) by Edwin Arthur Burtt, p. 75.
Philosophy is written in this grand book — I mean the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.
As translated in The Philosophy of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1966) by Richard Henry Popkin, p. 65
Il Saggiatore (1623)
Source: Galilei, Galileo. Il Saggiatore: Nel Quale Con Bilancia Efquifita E Giufta Si Ponderano Le Cofe Contenute Nellalibra Astronomica E Filosofica Di Lotario Sarsi Sigensano, Scritto in Forma Di Lettera All'Illustr. Et Rever. Mons. D. Virginio Cesarini. In Roma: G. Mascardi, 1623. Google Play. Google. Web. 22 Dec. 2015. <https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=-U0ZAAAAYAAJ>.

Books, Mathematics, Understanding, Learning

“There are only 3 things that can make your dreams come true: your thoughts, your words, and your actions.”

Mike Dooley (1961) American writer

Dreams

“Sometimes it was hard to express how much you loved someone. You said the words, but you could never quite capture the depth of it. You could never quite hold someone tightly enough.”

Diane Chamberlain (1950) American writer

Source: The Midwife's Confession

Love

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Letter to George Bainton, 15 October 1888, solicited for and printed in George Bainton, The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners (1890), pp. 87–88 http://books.google.com/books?id=XjBjzRN71_IC&pg=PA87. Twain repeated the lightning bug/lightning comparison in several contexts, and credited Josh Billings for the idea: Josh Billings defined the difference between humor and wit as that between the lightning bug and the lightning. Speech at the 145th annual dinner of St. Andrew's Society, New York, 30 November 1901, Mark Twain Speaking (1976), ed. Paul Fatout, p. 424 Billings' original wording was characteristically affected: Don't mistake vivacity for wit, thare iz about az mutch difference az thare iz between lightning and a lightning bug. Josh Billings' Old Farmer's Allminax, "January 1871" http://books.google.com/books?id=sUI1AAAAMAAJ&pg=PT30. Also in Everybody's Friend, or; Josh Billing's Encyclopedia and Proverbial Philosophy of Wit and Humor (1874), p. 304 http://books.google.com/books?id=7rA8AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA304 Source: The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain

“One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Foreword (January 1960)
You Learn by Living (1960)
Context: One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

Leadership