Words

The 10 Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words. ~~ The Atlanta Journal

Words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon with them, but they are the money of fools. ~~ Thomas Hobbes

Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented. ~~ Leo Rosten

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, or all that we might have done which we did not do … For me the conception of Hell lies in two words: Too Late. ~~ Gian-Carlo Menotti

If you are rich, you speak the truth; if you are poor, your words are but lies. ~~ Chinese proverb

If we are strong, our character will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help. ~~ John F. Kennedy [Undelivered address, Dallas, November 22, 1963]

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style. ~~ Logan Pearsall Smith

The word "now" is like a bomb thrown through the window, and it ticks. ~~ Arthur Miller

We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music. ~~ Mark Twain

A word and a stone let go cannot be called back. ~~ Thomas Fuller

Without the word dream, or the concept dream, and without the word blue and the emotions, I would have been really limited in the things I've written and performed. ~~ Roy Orbison

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words? ~~ Marcel Marceau

The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" which I saw on an Italian movie poster are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. ~~ Pauline Kael

For there are as many interpretations of the Word of God as there are religions upon the face of the earth. And none can tell you the separate truth that lies only within your soul. ~~ Glenn Kleier

The secret of joy is contained in one word -- excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. ~~ Pearl S. Buck

Well that's simply the way they talk here. Nobody pays any attention to you unless you swear every other word. ~~ Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home [film, 1986]

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of. ~~ Burt Bacharach

When ideas fail, words come in very handy. ~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind. ~~ Cicero

"Worry" is a word that I don't allow myself to use. ~~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

A politician is … trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him. ~~ Edward R. Murrow

If there were no such thing as coincidence, there would be no such word. ~~ Heron Carvic

It was Patrick Henry who said, "Give me liberty or give me death." Today, a lot of folks leave out the words liberty and death. ~~ Joe Moore

Anyone can tell word lies; but BODY lies require different skills. The art of faking desire or happiness or agreeable fatigue is not vouchsafed to everyone. ~~ Francois Mauriac

If somebody throws a brick at me, I can catch it and throw it back. But when somebody awards a decoration to me, I am out of words. ~~ Harry S Truman

I would die happy if I knew that on my tombstone could be written these words, "This man was an absolute fool. None of the disastrous things that he reluctantly predicted ever came to pass!" ~~ Lewis Mumford

True words are not always pretty; pretty words are not always true. ~~ Japanese proverb

Without words to objectify and categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, we cannot evolve a tradition of what is real in the world. ~~ Ruth Hubbard

If I were dying, my last words would be, Have faith and pursue the unknown end. ~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word? ~~ John Guare

Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that surely is a great and blessed invention. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

The words "I am …" are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you're claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you. ~~ A. L. Kitselman

That's the point of quotations, you know: one can use another's words to be insulting. ~~ Amanda Cross [Carolyn Heilbrun]

The word "meaningful" when used today is nearly always meaningless. ~~ Paul Johnson

[His last words:] Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. My advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. ~~ William Somerset Maugham

Nothing surely is more alive than a word. ~~ J. Donald Adams

Two things cannot be recalled: the spoken word and the neglected opportunity. ~~ Unattributed

Omit needless words. ~~ William Strunk, Jr.

You can suffocate a thought by expressing it with too many words. ~~ Frank A. Clark

There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people. ~~ Logan Pearsall Smith

His words leap across rivers and mountains, but his thoughts are still only 6 inches long. ~~ E. B. White

Words pay no debts. ~~ William Shakespeare

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

For all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!" ~~ John Greenleaf Whittier

Watch a man in times of … adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off. ~~ Lucretius

Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone. ~~ Paul Tillich

Help with deeds, not with words. ~~ Desiderius Erasmus

The value of the average conversation could be enormously improved by the constant use of four simple words: "I do not know." ~~ Andre Maurois

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I ever met. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

Words are like diamonds. Polish them too much, and all you get are pebbles. ~~ Bryce Courtenay

Rebellion: The words and acts of violence by people who have been deeply hurt. ~~ R. E. Phillips

Odd as it may seem, you will not find the word democracy in the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution. Nor is education a right mentioned in the Constitution. ~~ Deane Jordan

The concept of two people living together for twenty-five years without having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep. ~~ Alan Patrick Herbert

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean, -- neither more nor less." ~~ Lewis Carroll

All words are pegs to hang ideas on. ~~ Henry Ward Beecher

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords. ~~ Robert Louis Stevenson (see Said Who?)

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all. ~~ Sir Winston Churchill

One man's word is no man's word; we should quietly hear both sides. ~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Take charge of your life! … To act intelligently and effectively, we still must have a plan. To the proverb which says, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," I would add the words "and a road map." ~~ Cecile M. Springer

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities. ~~ James Baldwin

Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator and change has its enemies. ~~ Robert F. Kennedy

Words may be mere wind, but then so is a tornado. ~~ L. de V. Matthewman

It nothing profits to show virtue in words and destroy truth in deeds. ~~ Cyprian

Some guy hit my fender the other day, and I said unto him, "Be fruitful and multiply." But not in those words. ~~ Woody Allen

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. ~~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood. ~~ William Penn

Thought itself needs words. It runs on them like a long wire. And if it loses the habit of words, little by little it becomes shapeless, somber. ~~ Ugo Betti

A commentary on the times is that the word "honesty" is now preceded by "old-fashioned." ~~ Larry Wolters

Always leave home with a tender goodbye and loving words. They may be the last. ~~ Unattributed

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory. ~~ Tennessee Williams

Kind words will never die -- neither will they buy groceries. ~~ Kathleen Norris

If your strength is small, don't carry heavy burdens. If your words are worthless, don't give advice. ~~ Chinese proverb

[His last words:] I am bored with it all. ~~ Sir Winston Spencer Churchill

If you think twice before you speak, you'll find that about 90 percent of the time you will have no occasion to say a word. ~~ William C. Hunter

"Resource-constrained environment" [are] fancy Pentagon words that mean there isn't enough money to go around. ~~ General John W. Vessey, Jr.

Words can never express what words can never express. ~~ Ashleigh Brilliant

The word "politics" is derived from the word "poly," meaning "many," and the word "ticks," meaning "blood sucking parasites." ~~ Larry Hardiman

Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: "Do not try." ~~ Dan Parker

Cockamamie, that's a … that's a word your generation hasn't embraced yet. Maybe you ought to use it once in a while, just to kind of keep it alive, you know. ~~ In the Line of Fire [film, 1993]

A "pattern of reaction" is the sum total of the ways we act in response to events, to words and to symbols … in their more obvious forms we call them prejudices. ~~ S. I. Hayakawa

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. ~~ Thomas Jefferson

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. ~~ Philip K. Dick

Be careful of your thoughts; they may become words at any moment. ~~ Ira Gassen

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. ~~ Plato

[On the three most important words in the English language] Wait a minute. ~~ Sam Rayburn

However much you knock at nature's door, she will never answer you in comprehensible words. ~~ Ivan Turgenev

Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humor, the writing is on the wall. ~~ Alan Bennett

My class, you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. ~~ Dead Poets Society [film, 1989]

Thoughts, and words that spring from them, bend the individual's reality. To speak of death is to invite it. To think of sorrow is to produce it. ~~ Tony Hillerman [The Fallen Man]

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. ~~ G. K. Chesterton

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events not of words. Trust movement. ~~ Alfred Adler

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." ~~ Abraham Lincoln

If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought. ~~ Dennis Roth

Words, once they're printed, have a life of their own. ~~ Carol Burnett

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words. ~~ Elbert Hubbard

[Lawyers] … men that hire out words and anger. ~~ Martial

Three words sum up what you can count on in life: It goes on. ~~ Joe Moore

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words … By means of art we are sometimes sent -- dimly, briefly -- revelations unattainable by reason. ~~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start a new religion. ~~ L. Ron Hubbard

Hearing all this praise makes me feel like the soul on Judgment Day who rose, looked at the words on his tombstone, and remarked, "Either I'm in the wrong hole or someone is a terrible liar." ~~ Unattributed

Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky. ~~ Anais Nin

There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words. ~~ Dorothy Parker

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving in words evidence of the fact. ~~ George Eliot

Words and feathers the wind carries away. ~~ Unattributed

There is a price which it is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put into one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect. ~~ Woodrow Wilson

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes … 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 responsibility. ~~ Eleanor Roosevelt

It is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip service to their authority that we become sometimes most keenly conscious that we do not believe a word that we are saying. ~~ Virginia Woolf

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts. ~~ Samuel Johnson

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug. ~~ Mark Twain

The investigation of the meaning of words is the beginning of education. ~~ Antisthenes

We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make
A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound,
But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound
Tokens of love and hate, black sorcery stones. ~~ Stephen Vincent Benet

She talks with deliberation, as if pressing out a ruffle on each word. ~~ Marcelene Cox

I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne'er a word said she;
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me. ~~ Robert Browning Hamilton

Slogans are apt to petrify man's thinking… every slogan, every word almost, that is used by the socialist, the communist, the capitalist. People hardly think nowadays. They throw words at each other. ~~ Jawaharlal Nehru

Resignation, perhaps the most stifling word in the language. ~~ Caitin Thomas [Leftover Life to Kill]

The meaning of a word -- to me -- is not as exact as the meaning of a color. Colors and shapes make a more definite statement than words. ~~ Georgia O'Keefe

This ceremony is held in the depth of winter. But, by the words we speak and the faces we show the world, we force the spring. ~~ William Jefferson Clinton [inaugural speech, 1993]

Better than a thousand meaningless words is one word of sense, which brings the hearer peace. ~~ Dhammapada

The ideal woman which is in every man's mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree. ~~ William Faulkner

There is no word equivalent to "cuckold" for women. ~~ Joseph Epstein

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls. ~~ Paul Simon

Night, when words fade and things come alive, when the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree. ~~ Antoine de Saint Exupery

"Just-in-your-own words" was Mr. Gilmer's trademark. We often wondered who else's words Mr. Gilmer was afraid his witness might employ. ~~ Harper Lee [To Kill a Mockingbird]

Fair and unfair are among the most influential words in English and must be delicately used. ~~ Freya Stark

Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words. ~~ George Eliot

The very word euthanasia is never used because of the madman Hitler… [but] we in Holland know the word means "a mild death, a dignified death." And therefore we use it. ~~ Pieter V. Admiraal

I've always thought there must be some reason why the French words for "attorney" and "avocado" were the same. ~~ Katherine Neville

Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters. ~~ Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

Words have their genealogy, their history, their economy, their literature, their art and music, as too they have their weddings and divorces, their successes and defeats, their fevers, their undiagnoseable ailments, their sudden deaths. They also have their moral and social distinctions. ~~ Virgilia Peterson

We must think things not words, or at least we must continually translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true. ~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

There is Indian's time and white man's time. Indian time means never looking at the clock… There is not even a word for time in our language. ~~ Mary Brave Bird

A definition is the enclosing of a wilderness of ideas within a wall of words. ~~ Samuel Butler

Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group mind takes over. ~~ Arthur Koestler

Words are one thing--deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds. A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron. ~~ Joseph Stalin

Joggers die. Health-food addicts die, and so do people who have spent their entire lives in lounge chairs eating corn curls. Don't muddy it all up feeling guilty. If you've been told you're going to die soon, the only word that should bother you is "soon." ~~ Kathleen MacInnes [American Journal of Nursing]

For me words still possess their primitive, mystical, incantatory powers. I am inclined to use them as part of an attempt to make my own reality more real for others, as part of an effort to transcend emotional danger. For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. Their articulation represents a complete, lived experience. ~~ Ingrid Bengis

If a parent pictures for a child that his or her value in life is low, that child will find it difficult to rise above these words. In one insightful study of fathers and their daughters, it was found that these women's achievements in life were directly related to the level of their father's acceptance of them. ~~ William S. Appleton

Words are sometimes sensitive instruments of precision with which delicate operations may be performed and swift, elusive truths may be touched; often they are clumsy tools with which we grope in the dark toward truths more inaccessible but no less significant. ~~ Helen Merrell Lynd

Words were living things to her. She sensed them bestriding the air and charging the room with strong colors. ~~ Paulie Marshall

I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one's inner life. And that too is a deed. ~~ Etty Hillesum

In the Chinese world, nothing could be kept secret, the very word for secret also meant unlawful. ~~ Pearl S. Buck [My Several Worlds]

Some words are like the old Roman galleys; large-scaled and ponderous. They sit low in the water even when their cargo is light. ~~ William Jovanovich

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one. ~~ Baltasar Gracian

Remember, every time you open your mouth to talk, your mind walks out and parades up and down the words. ~~ Edwin H. Stuart

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. ~~ Lao-Tse

There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason, mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the words Good Breeding. ~~ Joseph Addison

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be: "meetings." ~~ Dave Barry [Dave Barry Turns 50]

Even if society dictates that men and women should behave in certain ways, it is fathers and mothers who teach those ways to children -- not just in the words they say, but in the lives they lead. ~~ Augustus Y. Napier

Anyone who… thinks that, through her own words and actions, she initiates and controls the connections between herself and God -- mustn't have much experience of God's boundless affection for even the grungingest of creatures. ~~ Nancy Mairs [Ordinary Time]

Be as a page that aches for a word
Which speaks on a theme that is timeless. ~~ Neil Diamond [Be]

Flowers are words
Which even a babe may understand. ~~ Bishop Coxe [The Singing of Birds]

We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them. ~~ Abigail Adams [Letters of Mrs. Adams]

Today, as you know, I am famous and very rich. But when I am alone with myself, I haven't the courage to consider myself an artist, in the great and ancient sense of that word… I am only a public entertainer, who understands his age. ~~ Pablo Picasso

What does it mean to love an animal, a pet, in my case a cat, in the fierce, entire and unambivalent way that some of us do? I really want to know this. Does the cat (did the cat) represent some person, a parent or a child? Some part of one's self? I don't think so -- and none of the words or phrases that one uses for human connections sound quite right: "crazy about," "really liked," "very fond of" -- none of those describes how I felt and still feel about my cat. ~~ Alice Adams

Read the Declaration of Independence to your children as a tradition every Fourth of July. Make sure they understand why the word "pursuit" precedes the word "happiness." ~~ Jeff Bezos

There are few more savvy observers of the political scene than David Brinkley. He calls them like he sees them, and minces no words -- as can be seen in his observation that "Washington DC is a city filled with people who believe they are important." ~~ Bob Dole [Great Political Wit]

Spirituality is rooted in desire. We long for something we can neither name nor describe, but which is no less real because of our inability to capture it with words. ~~ Mary Jo Weaver

Not a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words and suffer noble sorrows. ~~ Charles Reade

Children are meant to understand compassion and comfort because they have received compassion and comfort -- and this should be in the family setting. A family should be a place where comfort is experienced and understood, so that the people are prepared to give comfort to others. Comfort should be related to the word "family." ~~ Edith Schaeffer

Mothers who have little sense of their own minds and voices are unable to imagine such capacities in their children. Not being fully aware of the power of words for communicating meaning, they expect their children to know what is on their minds without the benefit of words. These parents do not tell their children what they mean by "good," much less why. Nor do they ask the children to explain themselves. ~~ Mary Field Belenky

All I Want is a Warm Bed and a Kind Word and Unlimited Power. ~~ Ashleigh Brilliant [title of book]

I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word "mayonnaise." ~~ Richard Brautigan

The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes, and hung them like bangles in my mind. ~~ Hortense Calisher

We ought to hear at least one little song every day, read a good poem, see a first-rate painting, and if possible speak a few sensible words. ~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All the feeling which my father could not put into words was in his hand -- any dog, child, or horse would recognize the kindness of it. ~~ Freya Stark

A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds. ~~ Unattributed

We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the other side of rights. ~~ Pearl S. Buck [To My Daughters, With Love]

People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything. ~~ Agnes Repplier

We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually. ~~ Madeleine L'Engle

Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will, and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words. ~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

There were clearly two classes of people in the world: those for whom the world was magnified and enriched in words and those who could never find the beautiful world of their living and knowing on any sheet of paper. ~~ Jessamyn West

Consistency is a human word, but it certainly expresses nothing human. ~~ L. E. Landon

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts. ~~ Voltaire

If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering, outspoken, honest fellow -- but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much. ~~ Philip Gilbert Hamerton

If you use words for political purposes, they soon lose whatever meaning they may have had. If you are tempted to brandish the word, "free," remember that over the gates of Auschwitz there stretched -- and still stretches -- the inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei." ~~ C. P. Snow

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope. ~~ Sir Winston Churchill

In America the word revolutionary is used to sell pantyhose. ~~ Rita Mae Brown [In Her Day]

Her profession was words and she believed in them deeply. The articulation, interpretation, appreciation, and preservation of good words… Words could incite, soothe, destroy, exorcise, redeem. ~~ Gail Godwin

Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible things to repair. ~~ Anne Sexton

The thoughtless are rarely wordless. ~~ Howard W. Newton

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a lovesickness. It is a reaching out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. ~~ Robert Frost

The word [androgyny] is misbegotten--conveying something like "John Travolta and Farrah Fawcett-Majors scotch-taped together." ~~ Mary Daly

Good shot, bad luck and hell are the five basic words to be used in a game of tennis. ~~ Virginia Graham

Make it compulsory for a doctor using a brass plate to have inscribed on it, in addition to the letters indicating his qualifications, the words, "Remember that I too am mortal." ~~ George Bernard Shaw

One of the marks of a great poet is that he creates his own family of words and teaches them to live together in harmony and to help one another. ~~ Gerald Brenan

In some families, "please" is described as the magic word. In our house, however, it was "sorry." ~~ Margaret Laurence [A Bird in the House]

An appreciation of words is so rare that everybody naturally thinks he possesses it, and this universal sentiment results in the misuse of a material whose beauty enriches the loving student beyond the dreams of avarice. ~~ Agnes Repplier

There are many people like me who believe firmly, if somewhat incoherently, that pockets on this planet are filled with what humans have left behind them, both good and evil, and that any such spiritual accumulation can stay there forever, past definition of such a stern word. ~~ M. F. K. Fisher

Yes, a mother is one thing that nobody can do without. And when you have harassed her, buffeted her about, tried her patience, and worn her out, and it seems that the end of the world is about to descend on you, then you can win her back with four little words, "Mom, I love you." ~~ William A. Greenbaum II

In the words of JFK: "Politics is like football. If you see daylight, go through the hole." ~~ Bob Dole [Great Political Wit]

Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it. ~~ C. P. Scott

Who knows what true loneliness is -- not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. ~~ Joseph Conrad (See Said Who?)

I know my stuff all looks like it was rattled off in twenty-three seconds, but every word is a struggle--every sentence is like pangs of birth. The Cat in the Hat ended up taking well over a year. ~~ Dr. Seuss

And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that? -- I love you -- I am at rest with you -- I have come home. ~~ Dorothy Sayers

Quoting: the act of repeating erroneously the words of another. ~~ Ambrose Bierce

Of what help is anyone who can only be approached with the right words? ~~ Elizabeth Bibesco

You're aging when your actions creak louder than your words. ~~ Milton Berle

Mama… made up words from scratch, by combining words, by turning them upside down, by running them backward. She built word palaces. Structures came out of her mouth like Steinberg pictures: wobbly, made of material fabricated on the spot, and no more useful than a poem. ~~ Jessamyn West

Few people know what they mean when they say, "I love you"… Well, what does the word LOVE mean? It means total interest. I think the reason very few people really fall in love with anyone is they're not willing to pay the price. The price is you have to adjust yourself to them. ~~ Katharine Hepburn

When all philosophies shall fail,
This word alone shall fit;
That a sage feels too small for life,
And a fool too large for it. ~~ G. K. Chesterton

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used. ~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Whoever thought up the word Mammogram? Every time I hear it, I think I'm supposed to put my [breast] in an envelope and send it to someone. ~~ Jan King

It may have been noticed that I use the word "guardianship," in preference to "ownership" of a cat. "Ownership" implies authority over body and soul. A dog, in its devotion, will of its own free will accept this authority; a cat, never. This independence is offensive to people who do not care for cats: I have never been able to understand why. I can no more see why one should assume possession over an animal than over a human being. ~~ Marguerite Steen

Make your own bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of trumpet out of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John, and Paul. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Often I am struck in amazement about a word: I suddenly realize that the complete arbitrariness of our language is but a part of the arbitrariness of our own world in general. ~~ Christian Morgenstern

One kind word can warm three winter months. ~~ Japanese saying

The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of 500 yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man. ~~ G. K. Chesterton

The painting rises from the brushstrokes as a poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later. ~~ Joan Miro

All human wisdom is summed up in two words -- wait and hope. ~~ Alexandre Dumas, pere

In the future, I predict the word "minorities" will become obsolete. As today's world grows ever more fragmented, with so many races and religions, we will come to realize we're ALL part of some minority of one sort or another. For, if the human race is to survive and fulfill its destiny, we must finally accept the fact that diversity is part of humanity's heritage--and every so-called "minority" has its essential place in the Creator's master plan. ~~ Stan Lee

When the strongest words for what I have to offer come out of me sounding like words I remember from my mother's mouth, then I have to reassess the meaning of everything I have to say now, or re-examine the worth of her old words. ~~ Audre Lorde

Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado, or lordliness. It consists in daring to do the right and facing consequences, whether it is in matters social, political, or other. It consists in deeds, not in words. ~~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out. ~~ Katherine Dunn

I love smooth words, like gold-enameled fish Which circle slowly with a silken swoosh. ~~ Elinor Wylie