words Quotes

“Words are the source of misunderstandings.”

“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”

“Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They’ll believe anything they see in print.”

“Don’t write about Man; write about a man.”

“Salutations are greetings; it’s my fancy way of saying hello.”

“With the right words, you can change the world.”

“Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both influencing injury, and remedying it.”

“The best of us sometimes eat our words.”

“Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!”

“If writers wrote as carelessly as some people talk, then adhasdh asdglaseuyt[bn[ pasdlgkhasdfasdf.”

“Anyone who thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not been stabbed with both.”

“Don’t repeat yourself. It’s not only repetitive, it’s redundant, and people have heard it before.”

“It is one of the peculiar truths of life that people often say things that they know full well are ridiculous.”

“‘You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,’ I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. ‘Can’t you talk about crops or something?’”

“The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain.”

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

“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.”

“Don’t gobblefunk around with words.”

“I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage.”

“I like good strong words that mean something.”

“Words are finite organs of the infinite mind.”

“We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.”

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

“Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.”

“I don’t want just words. If that’s all you have for me you’d better go.”

“I loved him very much - more than I could trust myself to say - more than words had power to express.”

“People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven’t you?”

“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”

“By my soul I swear, there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me.”

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

“Words, words, words.”

“Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.”

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

“My words itch at your ears till you understand them”

“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?”

“The best world shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words. That’s why she could climb higher than anyone else. She had desire. She was hungry for them.”

“Our words have power, but our actions shape our lives.”

“I wasn’t aware that words could hold so much. I didn’t know a sentence could be so full.”

“But she finds it so difficult to verbalize, Charles dear. It helps her if she can quote instead of working out words of her own.”

“Then he left her there, standing alone, surrounded by word ghosts; things she could have said.”

“Your tongue has grown as twisted as the roots of a fir tree. Speak not in riddles.”

“I believed then--and part of me will always believe--that my father’s words ought to be my own.”

“He read a lot. He used a lot of big words. I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often. A couple of times I tried to tell him it was a mistake to get too deep into that kind of stuff, but Alex got stuck on things. He always had to know the absolute right answer before he could go on to the next thing.”

“I’ve decided language isn’t as advanced as we think it is. We’re still apes trying to express our thoughts with grunts while most of what we want to communicate stays locked in our brains.”

“As always, words fail when you most want to say the right thing.”

“Our thoughts become our words, our words become our beliefs, our beliefs become our actions, our actions become our habits, and our habits become our realities.”

“People think they have to say something, and it never makes me feel better.”

“And it klonked. And it bonked. And it jerked. And it berked And it bopped them about. But the thing really worked!”

“Where words fail, music speaks.”

“If a man’s word isn’t any good, he’s no good himself.”

“We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.”

“Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.”

“There’s a light in a woman’s eyes that speaks louder than words.”

“I have no idea what you just said, child,′ Breeze said. ‘So I’m simply going to pretend it was coherent, then move on.”

“There is a time for making speeches, and a time for going to bed.”

“At length, when the excitement subsided a little, I was able to say a few words with a chance of being listened to. “I am truly thankful to see you all safe and well, and, thank God, our expedition has been very satisfactory.”

″‘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.‘”

There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.

“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”

“For words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the Soul within.”

“He sure put things into words good.”

“In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold: But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more.”

Let them see that their words can cut you and you’ll never be free of the mockery.

Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.

Savor language and words because no matter what anyone tells you, words and ideas have the power to change the world.

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.

Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.

“Govinda spoke: “Nirvana, Friend, is not only a word. It is a thought.””

“Even in him, even in your great teacher, I prefer the thing to the words, his actions and his life are more important than his speech, the gestures of his hand more important than his opinions.”

“Fantasies always sound good, but they’re no help when reality comes and shoves you to the ground. When it trips up your tongue and traps the right words in your head. When it leaves you to eat lunch by yourself.”

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

“That day, I learned that I could be a giver by simply bringing a smile to another person. The ensuing years have taught me that a kind word, a vote of support is a charitable gift. I can move over and make another place for someone. I can turn my music up if it pleases, or down if it is annoying. I may never be known as a philanthropist, but I certainly am a lover of mankind, and I will give freely of my resources.”

“The charitable say in effect, ‘I seem to have more than I need and you seem to have less than you need. I would like to share my excess with you.’ Fine, if my excess is tangible, money or goods, and fine if not, for I learned that to be charitable with gestures and words can bring enormous joy and repair injured feelings.”

“JUROR #8: You don’t really mean you’ll kill me, do you?”

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

“After dinner the whole family stretched out on the benches and the floor of the depot and read, with the dictionary in the middle of the room so we kids could look up words we didn’t know...Occasionally, on those nights when we were all reading together, a train would thunder by, shaking the house and rattling the windows. The noise was thunderous, but after we’d been there a while, we didn’t even hear it.”

“I lifted up my hands and called upon eternal truth, not with words but with tears.”

“Ah, my friends! I should have something more to say unto you! I should have something more to give unto you! Why do I not give it? Am I then a niggard?”

“Let thy virtue be too high for the familiarity of names, and if thou must speak of it, be not ashamed to stammer about it.”

“The bullhorn is as heavy as a gun. Ironic since Ms. Ofrah said to use my weapon.”

“He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others: just a shape to fill a lack.”

“Do you place your faith in words or the things you talk about but not in the truth and without a care for how you act?”

“Worthless. Stupid. These are the words I grew up hearing. They’re the words I try to outrun, because if I let them in, they might stay there and grow and fill me up and in, until the only thing left of me is worthless stupid worthless stupid worthless stupid freak. And then there’s nothing to do but run harder and fill myself with other words: This time will be different. This time, I will stay awake.”

“Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.”

“Hope - for such a simple word its meaning is profound.”

“I learned to love the feel of good words.”

“You have words of your own, Cassia,” Grandfather says to me. “I have heard some of them and they are beautiful.”

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”

“I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.”

“Don’t you hear it? She asked & I shook my head no & then she started to dance & suddenly there was music everywhere & it went on for a very long time & when I finally found words all I could say was thank you. ”

“Everybody uses words to express themselves. Except me. And I bet most people don’t realize the real power of words. But I do.”

“There are moments when mental overload can render words impossible.”

“He heard her speak and accepted her words with favor.”

“rarely discusses his plans, he knows that whenever he talks about a dream, he uses a little bit of the energy from that dream in order to do so…A Warrior of the Light knows the power of words.”

“Cath felt like she was swimming in words. Drowning in them, sometimes.”

“All symbols were in Smith’s vocabulary but he had trouble believing that he had heard rightly.”

“Integrity is when our words and deeds are consistent with our intentions.”

“She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”

“I draw because words are two unpredictable . . . I draw because words are too limited.”

“Words ... assemble a context in which the question, Is this true or false? is relevant.”

“But the moonlight and the setting, or maybe just the words he was saying, had somehow turned David into a pretty. Just for a moment.”

“I change myself, I change the world.”

“I is the hardest word to define.”

“Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.”

Funny how a single word can change everything in your life.

“Thou lov’st to speak in riddles and dark words.”

“Words scare not him who blenches not at deeds.”

“Yet one word Wipes out all score of tribulations—love.”

“A word can start off meaning one thing and end up meaning another… Words shouldn’t be allowed to change meanings.”

“Empty words almost echo within themselves”

“These were the first words of antagonism. To fling elaborate sarcasms at Tess, however, was much life flinging them at a dog or cat. The charms of their subtlety passed by her unappreciated...”

“Words are where most change begins.”

“The most important word a man can say are, ‘I will do better.‘”

“And as she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said (thinking to herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)—”

“I feel a little dizzy,” said Orion. “But also wonderfully elated. I feel that I am on the verge of finding a rhyme for the word orange.”

“These words are razors to my wounded heart.”

“First you must have the images, then come the words.”

“I’ve been thinking it over for years. While we loved each other we didn’t need words to make ourselves understood. But people don’t love forever. A time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me – only I couldn’t.”

“attend the boxing matches, go to the racetrack, live on luck and skill, get alone, get alone often, and if you can’t sleep alone be careful of the words you speak in your sleep; and ask for no mercy no miracles;..”

“I eat words! Delicious words! I gobble the words that you make. Words like rod taste like turds, but billow tastes like cake.”

“Absolute nonsense. We need more words like toothbrush.”

“Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.”

“If the Word does not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.”

“I love you in a language that I don’t fully understand. In words that I haven’t found enough courage to forklift out of my chest.”

“One day in the woods he met an Indian. They stood in the wet, cold woods and looked at each other, and they could not talk because they did not know each other’s words.”

“Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.”

“I’ve never met all these people you speak of. And neither, I suspect, have you. They only exist in words we hear. It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their eyes and ears.”

″‘What’s a big word for ‘library’?′ Charles asked his tutor. ‘Teachers love big words.‘”

“The word itself is music.”

“Part of being a good parent was knowing when to say something and what to say. The HARDEST part of parenting was knowing when to say nothing and listen.”

“The terms are strict and absolute; there may not even be a kind word spoken to the child.”

“Memories images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.”

“I am a lover of love and I am a lover of words, and the two together spin visions of airy castles, but also may pierce the heart of hope. And so I remind you that I am a fool, a poet, and what matters is reality, not lovely words. Words are full of promise, yet empty of matter.”

“Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.”

“The word no, so short, so easy to say, a child’s sound, a noise more than a word, a short exhalation of air: all he had to do was part his lips, and the word would come out, and—and what?”

“I love you more than words. And I am a big fan of words.”

“Words. Borne on the ever swelling current of hatred, like flowers opening in the current, petals peeling back, then falling apart.”

“I would never say snog. I would say osculate.” She looks at me as if to say: why do you exist?”

“For Meggie had a plan: She wanted to learn to make up stories like Fenoglio. She wanted to learn to fish for words so that she could read aloud to her mother without worrying about who might come out of the stories and look at her with homesick eyes.”

″‘Once upon a time,’ he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the saying of them comforted him.”

“Say it, reader. Say the word ‘quest’ out loud. It is an extraordinary word, isn’t it? So small and yet so full of wonder, so full of hope.”

“But, reader, there is no comfort in the word “farewell,” even if you say it in French. “Farewell” is a word that, in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.”

“But, reader, there is no comfort in the word “farewell,” even if you say it in French. “Farewell” is a word that, in any language, is full of sorrow. It is a word that promises absolutely nothing.”

..when the spoon is locked up in prison, the picture indicates he is sad because of his body posture (bending over and droopy) without the words having to.

“Knuffle bunny!!! And those were the first words Trixie ever said”.

″ ‘Wow,’ said Lilly. That was just about all she could say. ‘Wow’. ”

“She touched the necklace, giving the word for it, and I gave mine. We pointed out other things – the spring, the cave, a gull flying, the sun and the sky, Rontu asleep – trading the names for them and laughing because they were so different. We sat there on the rock until the sun was in the west and played this game. Then Tutok rose and made a gesture of farewell.”

“Not so long ago, before she could even speak words, Trixie went on an errand with her daddy....”

“That word again – responsibility. I’d been hearing it so much lately. From my teachers, from my parents, from everybody. Because I was tall (was that my fault?) and I played footy […] I ended up with all this responsibility. It didn’t seem fair.”

This wonderful story expresses through words that people can recover from painful comings and goings as long as they have the help of their friends and family and other loved ones.

“I could eat three bowls of goolash, half a pound of wuzzled wheat.”

“Depressed” is a word that often describes somebody who is feeling sad and gloomy, but in this case it describes a secret button, hidden in a crow statue, that is feeling just fine, thank you.”

“Terrific? What sort of word is that? Don’t you bring language like that into this cave!”

“I could eat a frittered flum.”

“Why did the English language have so few words for green? Every leaf and every tree had its own shade of green. Another example of how far Nature was still ahead of humans. ”

“When you go owling you don’t need words or warm or anything but hope.”

“With every second that went past, with every sentence she spoke, she felt a little strength flowing back. And now that she was doing something difficult and familiar and never quite predictable, namely lying, she felt a sort of mastery again, the same sense of complexity and control that the alethiometer gave her.”

″‘Gump,’ Coach say after I am finished, ‘you sure got a way with words.‘”

“Even if words are lost, tradition should be handed down.”

“Leo couldn’t do anything right. He couldn’t read. He couldn’t write. He couldn’t draw. He was a sloppy eater. And, he never said a word.”

“I take a longer look at the words on her headstone. Brave, kind, loyal, sweet, loving, graceful, strong, thoughtful, funny, genuine, hopeful, playful, insightful, and on and on… Was she, though? Was she any of those things? The words make me angry. I can’t look at them any longer. Why do we romanticize the dead? Why can’t we be honest about them?”

“He also spoke. And it wasn’t just a word. It was a whole sentence. And that sentence was... ‘I made it!’ “

“We were always surrounded by books and words and poetry, all the fierce passion of the world bound in leather and vellum.”

“How could we explain that standing on a stage and speaking someone else’s words as if they are your own is less an act of bravery than a desperate lunge at mutual understanding? An attempt to forge that tenuous link between speaker and listener and communicate something, anything, of substance.”

“Over his shoulder Conrad said, ‘Good night Belly.’ And that was it. I was in love”

“The thing about Shakespeare is, he’s so eloquent…He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible.”

“I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn’t that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.”

“I touch my tongue to the word volition, like it’s a fruit I’ve never tasted that’s already gone sour in my mouth.”

“Zorba was the man I had sought so long in vain. A living heart, a large voracious mouth, a great brute soul, not yet severed from mother earth. The meaning of the words, art, love, beauty, purity, passion, all this was made clear to me by the simplest of human words uttered by this workman.”

“Awed, unique, and proud were three words that she had written on page seven of her green notebook. She kept lists of her favorite words, she kept important private information; and she kept things that she though might be the beginnings of poems, in her green notebook. No one had ever looked inside the green notebook except Anastasia.”

“I oppose to what is passing this ramrod of beaten steel. I will not submit to this aimless passing of billycock hats and Homburg hats and all the plumed and variegated head-dresses of women . . . and the words that trail drearily without human meaning; I will reduce you to order.”

“Also, how I distrust neat designs of life that are drawn upon half sheets of notepaper. What delights me is the confusion, the height, the indifference, and the fury.”

“The truth always carries the ambiguity of the words used to express it.”

“He had suddenly had a strange feeling stronger than any he had ever known: he had been aware that someone was trying to tell him something, something that had missed him because he could not understand the words. Not words exactly; it had been like a kind of silent shout. But he had not been able to pick up the message, because he had not known how. ”

“Oh no, I am gathering words. For the winter days are long and many, and we’ll run out of things to say.′ ”

“Words were so puzzling. Present should mean a present just as attack should mean to stick tacks in people.”

“when i had no friends i reached inside my beloved books & sculpted some out of 12 pt times new roman.”

″-forever a collector of words.”

“Wealth, my son, should never be your goal in life. Your words are eloquent, but they are mere words. True wealth is of the heart, not of the purse.”

“He had said the very last word he would have applied to war, once he had had a good look at it, was “purifying,” and the thought that those women could believe the world was any way purer for the loss of their own sons and husbands was appalling to him.”

“But Inman thought all words had some issue, so he walked and said the spell, aiming it out against the world at large, all his enemies. He repeated it over and over to himself as some people, in fear or hope, will say a single prayer endlessly until it burns itself in their thoughts so that they can work or even carry on a conversation with it still running unimpeded...”

“Words are loneliness.”

“Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought of the bygone times, and very softly she began to murmur the words to the song.”

“But by now every word, every gesture was foreseeable, as all else in that war which had lasted so many years, its every skirmish and duel conducted according to rules so that it was always known beforehand who would win or lose, be heroic or cowardly, be gutted or merely unhorsed and thumped.”

“Then Rab began to smile. Everything he had never put into words was in that smile.”

“But it wasn’t haunted by ghosts, just three sad people trying to live their lives as before. A house not haunted by flickering lights or spectral falling chairs, but by dark spray-painted letters of ‘Scum Family’ and stone shattered windows.”

“I fell in love with the organization, the way language- the pure truth in the words- was nonnegotiable.”

“And I wondered if love was too weak a word for what he felt, what he’d done for me. For what I felt for him.”

“His last word was my name. His last thought was of me.”

“There was no reason for Emira to be unfamiliar with this word. And there was no reason for Alix to be impressed. Alix completely knew these things, but only when she reminded herself to stop thinking them in the first place.”

“There’s no other word like it. The state of being infatuated with another person.”

“His arms become a set of parentheses bracketing the sweetest secret phrase.”

″‘You see,’ he went on at last, ‘I’m pretty good at inventing phrases--you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you’d sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they’re about something hypnopædically obvious. But that doesn’t seem enough. It’s not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.‘”

″‘Oh, as far as they go.’ Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. ‘But they go such a little way. They aren’t important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say?

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly--they’ll go through anything.

But what on earth’s the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing--you know, like the very hardest X-rays--when you’re writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing?

He would have liked to say something about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death. He would have liked to speak; but there were no words. Not even in Shakespeare.

They had come to a stream which twisted and tumbled between high rocky banks, and Christopher Robin saw at once how dangerous it was. “It’s just the place,” he explained, “for an Ambush.” “What sort of bush?” whispered Pooh to Piglet. “A gorse-bush?” “My dear Pooh,” said Owl in his superior way, “don’t you know what an Ambush is?” “Owl,” said Piglet, looking round at him severely, “Pooh’s whisper was a perfectly private whisper, and there was no need——” “An Ambush,” said Owl, “is a sort of Surprise.” “So is a gorse-bush sometimes,” said Pooh. “An Ambush, as I was about to explain to Pooh,” said Piglet, “is a sort of Surprise.” “If people jump out at you suddenly, that’s an Ambush,” said Owl. “It’s an Ambush, Pooh, when people jump at you suddenly,” explained Piglet. Pooh, who now knew what an Ambush was, said that a gorse-bush had sprung at him suddenly one day when he fell off a tree, and he had taken six days to get all the prickles out of himself. “We are not talking about gorse-bushes,” said Owl a little crossly. “I am,” said Pooh.

“Well, my dear, what could I say? I could only tell him that I was the happiest woman in all the wide world, and that I had nothing to give him except myself, my life, and my trust, and that with these went my love and duty for all the days of my life.”

“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last for ever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”

Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it.

“Consequently they who assert that all is well have said a foolish thing, they should have said all is for the best.”

“Ah, Rodion Romanovitch, don’t put too much faith in words, perhaps prison will not be altogether a restful place.

“I perceived that the words they spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in the minds and countenances of the hearers.”