WORDS QUOTES IX

quotations about words


Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 27

I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.

LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37

Harper's Magazine, November 2010


Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 63

Tags: Lewis H. Lapham


Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly -- they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Brave New World

Tags: Aldous Huxley


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

FRANK HERBERT

Children of Dune


All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life.

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Thoughts on Art and Life

Tags: Leonardo da Vinci


Words are soldiers of fortune
Hired by different ideas.

MAXWELL BODENHEIM

"Impulsive Dialogue"

Tags: Maxwell Bodenheim


Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.

ROBERT ALTMAN

Esquire, March 2004

Tags: Robert Altman


I must make a choice every time I speak a sentence in English. I try to choose the happier way of saying things, so that my own words will not weigh me down like stones.

TAD WILLIAMS

Otherland: City of Golden Shadow

Tags: Tad Williams


Not content with the million or so words they already have at their disposal, English speakers are adding new ones at the rate of around 1,000 a year. Recent dictionary debutants include blog, grok, crowdfunding, hackathon, airball, e-marketing, sudoku, twerk and Brexit.

ANDY BODLE

"How new words are born", The Guardian, February 4, 2016


My method is to find a word with a gesture.

CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN

An Evolution in Aphorisms

Tags: Christian Morgenstern


Words, like cannon balls, should go direct to their mark.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Tags: Christian Nestell Bovee


A word makes thy fortune sometimes.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims

Tags: Edward Counsel


I sit and say nothing for fear
My words will turn to stone
And though they are sincere,
They will become a prison of their own.

GARRISON KEILLOR

Pilgrims

Tags: Garrison Keillor


The same words
come from each mouth
differently.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

"Fifteen Pebbles"


For human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ


Our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people derive from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them.

MARCEL PROUST

Within a Budding Grove

Tags: Marcel Proust


Twas a special gift of God that speech was given to mankind; for through the Word, and not by force, wisdom governs.

MARTIN LUTHER

"Of God's Word", Table Talk

Tags: Martin Luther


Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementary sense of implying its absence -- by naming a thing, we treat it as absent, as dead, although it is still present -- but above all in the sense of its radical dissection: the word "quarters" the thing, it tears it out of the embedment in its concrete context, it treats its component parts as entities with an autonomous existence: we speak about color, form, shape, etc., as if they possessed self-sufficient being.

SLAVOJ ZIZEK

Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out

Tags: Slavoj Zizek


How charming it is that there are words and sounds: are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things eternally separated?

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


In the increasingly convincing darkness
The words become palpable, like a fruit
That is too beautiful to eat.

JOHN ASHBERY

Houseboat Poems

Tags: John Ashbery


God's linguistic being is the word. All human language is only reflection of the word in name. Name is no closer to the word than knowledge to creation. The infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytical in nature in comparison to the absolutely unlimited and creative infinity of the divine word.

WALTER BENJAMIN

Reflections

Tags: Walter Benjamin