quotations about words
Superfluous words simply spill out when the mind is already full.
HORACE
Ars Poetica
Words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"After Long Silence"
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Spanish Gypsy
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
GEORGE ORWELL
The Lion and the Unicorn
The sharpest sword is a word spoken in wrath.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
The Gospel of Buddha
Oaths are but words, and words but wind.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
And the words slide into the slots ordained by syntax, and glitter as with atmospheric dust with those impurities which we call meaning.
ANTHONY BURGESS
Enderby Outside
A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Culture and Value
Above all, beware of platitudes, i.e., word combinations that have already appeared a thousand times.... As a general rule, try to find new combinations of words (not for the sake of their novelty, but because every person sees things in an individual way and must find his own words for them).
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
letter to Kirill Nabokov, c. 1930
I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.
PABLO NERUDA
"So That You Will Hear Me"
Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
The Olive Tree
Rigour and purity in assembling words, however simple the result, create a vacuum.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
Certain individual words do possess more pitch, more radiance, more shazam! than others, but it's the way words are juxtaposed with other words in a phrase or sentence that can create magic. Perhaps literally. The word "grammar," like its sister word "glamour," is actually derived from an old Scottish word that meant "sorcery." When we were made to diagram sentences in high school, we were unwittingly being instructed in syntax sorcery, in wizardry. We were all enrolled at Hogwarts. Who knew?
TOM ROBBINS
interview, Reality Sandwich
Wicked words are the prelude to wicked deeds.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
I like good strong words that mean something.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
You wait for nothing
if not for the word
that will burst from the deep
like a fruit among branches.
CESARE PAVESE
"Earth and Death"
Never use a big word when a little filthy one will do.
JOHNNY CARSON
The Tonight Show
What a pity it is that there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together; and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a ribbon ... or a husband.
JULIUS CHARLES HARE
Guesses at Truth
There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Principles of Success in Literature