Words Quotes

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.

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.

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

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

I like good strong words that mean something…

Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way.

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world.
She was the book thief without the words.
Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain.

Don't gobblefunk around with words.

Sweet words are like honey, a little may refresh, but too much gluts the stomach.

Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.

It happens like this.
"One day you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, you feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else--closer to them than your closest family. Perhaps this person carries within them an angel--one sent to you for some higher purpose; to teach you an important lesson or to keep you safe during a perilous time. What you must do is trust in them--even if they come hand in hand with pain or suffering--the reason for their presence will become clear in due time."
Though here is a word of warning--you may grow to love this person but remember they are not yours to keep. Their purpose isn't to save you but to show you how to save yourself. And once this is fulfilled; the halo lifts and the angel leaves their body as the person exits your life. They will be a stranger to you once more.
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It's so dark right now, I can't see any light around me.
That's because the light is coming from you. You can't see it but everyone else can.

I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
[
Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory
(1980)]

He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.

I believe in the magic and authority of words.

We live and breathe words.

So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.

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

Because even the smallest of words can be the ones to hurt you, or save you.

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

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.

Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?

Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them.

There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.

I am a poet in deeds--not often in words.

How odd I can have all this inside me and to you its just words.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.

The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS.

It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.

I couldn't live a week without a private library - indeed, I'd part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I'd let go of the 1500 or so books I possess.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters.

If you have a dream, don’t just sit there. Gather courage to believe that you can succeed and leave no stone unturned to make it a reality.

What a curious power words have.

Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.

The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.

A Word is Dead
A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.

I say it just
Begins to live
That day.

The menu is not the meal.

I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.

Lying is done with words, and also with silence.

Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.