Words

"Written words—in samizdat journals too numerous to list, legal independent Catholic journals like Tygodnik Powszechny, Znak, or Wiez, internal university publications, samizdat books from publishers like Krag, Nowa, or cdn, political programs, long and short, moderate and extreme; spoken words—in sermons, hymns, lectures, legal and illegal seminars, worker education groups, theaters, cabaret, unofficial cassettes; audiovisual words—wonderfully funny tapes from the satirist Jacek Fedorowicz, wonderfully serious tapes about Friedrich von Hayek, passed around on the country’s now numerous videocassette recorders; words, words, words."

"If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul."

"Words are pegs to hang ideas on."

"Behind the word is silence, behind that silence is forgetfulness."

"When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose."

"If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilised discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up."

"A very great part of the mischiefs that vex this world arises from words."

"When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. … there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak."

""When I use a word", Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less". "The question is", said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things". "The question is", said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all"."

"Grasp the subject, the words will follow."

"Words matter. Words matter when you run for president. And they really matter when you are president."

"John Amos Comenius’ foundation principle was that a knowledge of things should precede the study of words; therefore an acquaintance with actual objects, as those of nature, science, and art, should precede the study of dialectics and rhetoric, so that these might not be a mere word-play without substance and meaning."

"Words have the power to release pent-up emotions as well as to define them in rational and meaningful terms."

"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."

"Not only the tools of manual labour, but also the tools of human thought — words — are subject to the laws of historical development. The history of the meanings of words is outside the area of interest of formal logic, and could not be fruitfully studied by the methods of that discipline. The history of language in what is its most essential content is the history of language as a social instrument of thought; it is historical epistemology which cannot be studied within the scope of any other discipline. The linguist is of necessity only marginally interested in all conventional terminology, whereas certain votaries of formal logic are inclined to investigate domains which are alien to linguistics and even to some extent in contradiction to its basic assumptions!"

"As long as words a different sense will bear, And each may be his own interpreter, Our airy faith will no foundation find; The word's a weathercock for every wind."

"I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards."

"Our words have wings, but fly not where we would."

"I see more than this, more than I can tell you, More than there are words for. At this moment there is no decision to be made; The decision will be made by powers beyond us Which now and then emerge."

"The Letheri are masters at corrupting words, their meanings. They call war peace, they call tyranny liberty. On which side of the shadow you stand decides a word's meaning. Words are the weapons used by those who see others with contempt. A contempt which only deepens when they see how those others are deceived and made into fools because they choose to believe. Because in their naivety they thought the meaning of a word was fixed, immune to abuse."

"What if my words Were meant for deeds."

"And the One seated on the throne said: “Look! I am making all things new.” Also he says: “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”"

"'Tis a word that's quickly spoken, Which being restrained, a heart is broken."

"Purity of spirit lies at the beginning of things, there where the first stirrings set in, where conceptions of being and doing are formed. It is that initial authenticity in which the true meaning of words is grounded and their relation to each other is corrected, their edges are trimmed. Spirit becomes impure […] when it is indifferent to truth; when it no longer desires to think cleanly or to measure by the standards of eternity; […] when it besmudges the sense of words—which is the sense of things and of existence itself—robbing them of their austerity and nobility."

"The arrow belongs not to the archer when it has once left the bow; the word no longer belongs to the speaker when it has once passed his lips, especially when it has been multiplied by the press."

"Words and feathers the wind carries away."

"Any concepts or words which have been formed in the past through the interplay between the world and ourselves are not really sharply defined with respect to their meaning: that is to say, we do not know exactly how far they will help us in finding our way in the world. We often know that they can be applied to a wide range of inner or outer experience, but we practically never know precisely the limits of their applicability. This is true even of the simplest and most general concepts like "existence" and "space and time". Therefore, it will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth. The concepts may, however, be sharply defined with regard to their connections... a group of connected concepts may be applicable to a wide field of experience and will help us to find our way in this field. But the limits of the applicability will in general not be known, at least not completely..."

"Words are women, deeds are men."

"Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real."

"Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another."

"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."

"Tristia mæstum Vultum verba decent; iratum, plena minarum; Ludentem, lasciva; severum, seria dictu."

"Delere licebit Quod non edideris; nescit vox missa reverti."

"Words are good servants but bad masters."

"For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."

"I am coming quickly. Happy is anyone observing the words of the prophecy of this scroll."

"In every word of extenſive uſe, it was requiſite to mark the progreſs of its meaning, and ſhow by what gradations of intermediate ſenſe, it has paſſed from its primitive to its remote and accidental ſignification ; ſo that every foregoing explanation ſhould tend to that which follows, and the ſeries be regularly concantenated from the firſt notion to the laſt."

"Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking."

"Darkseid: I like you Glorious Godfrey! You're a shallow, precious child -- The Revelationist -- Happy with the sweeping sound of words!"

"... we English people delight in a moral — not a moral to be deduced or inferred, but a nice, rounded, little moral, in all the starch of set sentences, and placed just at the end."

"'Tis a strange mystery, the power of words ! Life is in them, and death. A word can send The crimson colour hurrying to the cheek, Hurrying with many meanings; or can turn The current cold and deadly to the heart. Anger and fear are in them ; grief and joy Are on their sound ; yet slight, impalpable:— A word is but a breath of passing air."

"Without approval and without scorn, but carefully studying the sentences word by word, one should trace them in the Discourses (Sutta) and verify them by the Discipline (Vinaya). If they are neither traceable in the Discourses nor verifiable by the Discipline, one must conclude thus: ‘Certainly, this is not the Blessed One’s utterance; this has been misunderstood by that bhikkhu — or by that community, or by those elders, or by that elder.’ In that way, bhikkhus, you should reject it."

"Every word carries its own surprises and offers its own rewards to the reflective mind. Their amazing variety is a constant delight. I do not believe that I am alone in this—a fascination with words is shared by people in all countries and all walks of life."

"With high words, that bore Semblance of worth, not substance."

"Yet hold it more humane, more heav'nly, first, By winning words to conquer willing hearts, And make persuasion do the work of fear."

"A word may denote to an advocate something which he wishes an audience to understand; yet it may have connotations which will produce an antagonistic impression. The result is ambiguity leading to misunderstanding of meaning."

"Our words are not rough, unhewn stones, left at our door by a glacial moraine; they are blocks that have been brought to light by immense labour, that have been carved, measured and weighted again, before they became what we find them to be. Our poets make poems out of words, but every word, if carefully examined, will turn out to be itself a petrified poem, a reward of a deed done or a thought thought by those to whom we owe the whole of our intellectual inheritance, the capital on which we live, with which we speculate and strive to grow richer from day to day."

"For the word of God is alive and exerts power and is sharper than any two-edged sword and pierces even to the dividing of soul and spirit, and of joints and [their] marrow, and [is] able to discern thoughts and intentions of [the] heart. 13 And there is not a creation that is not manifest to his sight, but all things are naked and openly exposed to the eyes of him with whom we have an accounting."

"There is something indecent in words."

"A man of words and not of deeds, Is like a garden full of weeds..."