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The words dripped on my consciousness, sank into my being, and carried me away to the magic long ago of once upon a time. (Peter Abrahams)
When you have a nonverbal conversation with a total stranger, then he can't cover himself with words, he can't create a wall. (Marina Abramovic)
We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them. (Abigail Adams)
All I can do in my writing is to stimulate a certain amount of thought, clarify some technical facts and date my work. But when I preach sharpness, brilliancy, scale, etc., I am just mouthing words, because no words can really describe those terms and qualities it takes the actual print to say, 'Here it is.' (Ansel Adams)
No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. (Henry Brooks Adams)
The play is not in the words, it's in you! (Stella Adler)
I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary' diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive. (James Agee)
The paper burns, but the words fly away. (Ben Joseph Akiba)
A lot of words in English confuse the idea of life and electricity, like the word livewire. (Laurie Anderson)
-Winesburg, Ohio...
You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say. (Sherwood Anderson)
When you write songs, you can't really point out the exact thing you're inspired by. It's more a state or a mood or an atmosphere that you're trying to put into words. (Keren Ann)
The word is a sign or symbol of the impressions or affections of the soul. (Aristotle)
I don't let my mouth say nothin' my head can't stand. (Louis Armstrong)
Philistinism! - We have not the expression in English. Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much of the thing. (Matthew Arnold)
A word after a word after a word is power. (Margaret Atwood)
You have asked for and been given enough words - it is now time to live them. (Meher Baba)
The words of the world want to make sentences. (Gaston Bachelard)
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. (Joan Baez)
When I really want to be soothed and reminded of why people bother to fiddle with sentences, I often read poetry. (Nicholson Baker)
I believe painting or visual art is suffocated by verbal description. (J.R. Baldini)
Don't burden art with words and ideas. Art comes from a deeper place. (Darby Bannard)
'Conceptual art' is an oxymoron. Concepts are articulations of fact or supposition, not attributes of quality. (Darby Bannard)
Postmodernism does not facilitate better art. It rationalizes inferior art by wrapping it in words - a suit of armor with nobody inside. (Darby Bannard)
-Canadian writer...
When did the visual arts become so encrusted with words?... this whole dense verbal screen, like a mass of aggressive kudzu through which the visual tries to peep... Which words help, and which words hinder, the making and experiencing of art? (Michael Barnes)
In alarming proportions the following words have disappeared from architectural publications: beauty, inspiration, magic, sorcery, enchantment, and also serenity, mystery, silence, privacy, astonishment. All of these have found a loving home in my soul. (Luis Barragan)
Cartoonist was the weirdest name I finally let myself have. I would never say it. When I heard it I silently thought, what an awful word. (Lynda Barry)
There are about 30 words around you all the time, like 'thread' or 'exit.' (Jean-Michel Basquiat)
I cross out words so you will see them more; the fact that they are obscured makes you want to read them. (Jean-Michel Basquiat)
There are few things as toxic as a bad metaphor. You can't think without metaphors. (Mary Catherine Bateson)
A text cannot say everything. It can only go as far as all words can go. Beyond them begins another zone, a zone of mystery, of silence, which one calls the atmosphere. (Gaston Baty)
If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it. (Pierre Beaumarchais)
There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle. (Samuel Beckett)
Words are all we have. (Samuel Beckett)
Words are the clothes thoughts wear. (Samuel Beckett)
All words are pegs to hang ideas on. (Henry Ward Beecher)
Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. (Ingrid Bengis)
Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble. (Yehuda Berg)
Today the discredit of words is very great. (John Berger)
A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. (Ingrid Bergman)
We live beyond words, as also we live beyond computation and beyond theory. (Wendell Berry)
When I feel the beauty in words, I am sensing the logic of heart. (Toba Beta)
- Betelgeuse Incident...
There has to be new words to explain new worlds. (Toba Beta)
Powerful words harmonize heart and mind as if a symphony. (Toba Beta)
- Joseph Beuys and the Celtic Wor(l)d...
For me it is the WORD that produces all images. It is the key sign for all processes of moulding and organizing. (Joseph Beuys)
Your words should be so strong that they affect every part of your intuition so that you can recognize what is real and of heart. (Yogi Bhajan)
-The Cynic's Word Book, 1906
The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that 'it isn't in the dictionary' - although down to the time of the first lexicographer (Heaven forgive him!) no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary. (Ambrose Bierce)
grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet for the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction. (Ambrose Bierce)
There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together. (Josh Billings)
Too much verbal stimulation causes the work to suffer. (Gene Black)
I collect words and phrases for naming the children of my brush. (Gene Black)
Wouldn't it be nice if every painting I'd ever done had a little note on the back? Maybe not. A painting is made from paint, not words, after all. (Eleanor Blair)
A burlesque word is often a powerful sermon. (Nicolas Boileau)
Don't get me too excited because I use four letter words when I get excited. (Bono)
In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better. (Edward de Bono)
Contrary to conventional wisdom, art has not always been a noun... At the birth of the word 'art,' it was a verb that meant, 'to put things together.' It was not a product but a process. (Eric Booth)
While words are powerful and necessary, our actions represent our true desires. (Kelly Borsheim)
In this communication-heavy world, nothing is becoming more devalued than words. We waste them all the time simply because we can. (Daphne Bramham)
Grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules; it is a compact between people who wish to understand each other. (Robert Brault)
Media, the plural of mediocrity. (Jimmy Breslin)
The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine. (Robert Bresson)
Words make love with one another. (Andre Breton)
Since I can more easily perceive my thoughts in words than the silent body language in which I sculpt, perhaps I'd have been a better sculptor had I never learned to speak. (Robert G. Breur)
Who has words at the right moment? (Charlotte Bronte)
I never wanted to dilute my private passion for the art by airing and arguing it in public. (James Broughton)
Words carry weight in the world of paintings. At times quite artfully. (Harley Brown)
Art is just a three letter word. (Peter William Brown)
He said true things, but called them by wrong names. (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
Alphabet: a symbolic system used in algebra, with applications that have yet to be discovered by dyslexics and two thirds of college graduates. (Benson Bruno)
Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace. (Gautama Buddha)
I love painting with a palette full of words. (Michael J. Budnicki)
It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you. (Charles Bukowski)
Bu' is a word that cools many a warm impulse, stifles many a kindly thought, puts a dead stop to many a brotherly deed. No one would ever love his neighbor as himself if he listened to all the ''Buts'' that could be said. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)
The downtrodden are the great creators of slang. (Anthony Burgess)
If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilised discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up. (Anthony Burgess)
Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own. (Carol Burnett)
Young. Old. Just Words. (George Burns)
I am not one who - who flamboyantly believes in throwing a lot of words around. (George H.W. Bush)
Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called 'walking.' (George W. Bush)
The thing that's wrong with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur. (George W. Bush)
Oaths are but words, and words are but wind. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Words are not as satisfactory as we should like them to be, but, like our neighbours, we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them. (Samuel Butler, novelist)
Keep thy smooth words and juggling homilies for those who know thee not. (Lord Byron)
-Lecture on Nothing...
I have nothing to say/ and I am saying it/ and that is poetry/ as I need it. (John Cage)
I haven't learned to be politically correct yet. (Herman Cain)
The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore. (Albert Camus)
The word 'Retro' implies going 'backward' or making something from the past look new and contemporary - it is both ambiguous and judgmental. Take out judgmental words and maybe the divide will disappear. (Susan Canavarro)
If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know? If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words? Why is 'phonics' not spelled the way it sounds? How come abbreviated is such a long word? (George Carlin)
Why do 'fat chance' and 'slim chance' mean the same thing? (George Carlin)
Be not a slave of words. (Thomas Carlyle)
It's all the unwordable things one wants to write about, just as it's all the unformable things one wants to paint – essence. (Emily Carr)
-Hundreds and Thousands...
Trying to find equivalents for things in words helps me find equivalents in painting. (Emily Carr)
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I chose it to mean - neither more nor less.' (Lewis Carroll)
Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact. (Willa Cather)
-Journey to the End of the Night...
When you stop to examine the way in which our words are formed and uttered, our sentences are hard-put to it to survive the disaster of their slobbery origins. (Louis-Ferdinand Celine)
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience. (Miguel de Cervantes)
Words are wonderful, and for the times when artists take themselves too seriously, words like 'fuzzify' are absolutely essential to restore the sense of humour. Eh? (Jane Champagne)
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split. (Raymond Chandler)
Love is a special word, and I use it only when I mean it. You say the word too much and it becomes cheap. (Ray Charles)
Our expression and our words never coincide, which is why the animals don't understand us. (Malcolm de Chazal)
I try to catch every sentence, every word you and I say, and quickly lock all these sentences and words away in my literary storehouse because they might come in handy. (Anton Chekhov)
They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words - 'free-love' - as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. (G. K. Chesterton)
The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say. (G. K. Chesterton)
Nowadays, the long extended explanations on the hidden meaning behind the art work are so confusing. Does the writing mean to strengthen the work or is the work so weak that it needs words as vitamin supplements to spur growth? (Teresa Chow)
Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all. (Winston Churchill)
Watch your words, they become your actions. (Winston Churchill)
That depends on what your definition of 'is' is. (Bill Clinton)
I've said it before: equations are the devil's sentences. The worst one is that quadratic equation, an infernal salad of numbers, letters, and symbols. (Stephen Colbert)
What is a epigram? A dwarfish whole. Its body brevity, and wit its soul. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
-The Pure and the Impure...
The word 'pure' has never revealed an intelligent meaning to me. I can only use the word to quench an optical thirst for purity in the transparencies that evoke it - in bubbles, in a volume of water, and in the imaginary latitudes entrenched, beyond reach, at the very center of a dense crystal. (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette)
Words, as is well known, are great foes of reality. (Joseph Conrad)
If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong. (Aaron Copland)
Reflecting on and translating each experience into words helps us to become more aware, learn and grow. (Nikki Coulombe)
-Requiem Notations
It was a whirlwind of emotions and feelings... finding words and images to record appearance and disappearance over time, a way of folding together the sayable and unsayable, beginnings and endings. Elegies. (Pierre Coupey)
It's weird when people start sentences with 'frankly' - as if their other sentences don't count. (Doug Coupland)
Without trying to clear up the degree of correctness of a qualification which no one, one must hope, will be asked to understand exactly, I will limit myself to a few words of explanation to cut short any misunderstandings. (Gustave Courbet)
Who knows why some words ignite the hearts of some readers while others are like wet matches that won't light. (Phil Cousineau)
I think one of the best words in the English language is 'compassion'... It holds love, it holds care... (Michael Crawford)
Your own words are the bricks and mortar of the dreams you want to realize. Your words are the greatest power you have. The words you choose and their use establish the life you experience. (Sonia Croquette)
- The BFG...
Don't gobblefunk around with words. (Roald Dahl)
I find it very difficult to put into words the reasons that compel me to paint a particular subject. (John Darlinson)
You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else. (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
Metaphors are fine if they aid understanding, but sometimes they get in the way. (Richard Dawkins)
The word 'mundane' has come to mean 'boring' and 'dull,' and it really shouldn't - it should mean the opposite. Because it comes from the latin mundus, meaning 'the world.' And the world is anything but dull. (Richard Dawkins)
I love words... so I can be a sucker for eloquence. Sometimes I assume that there is substance behind the words. Sometimes I am right. And, sometimes I am wrong. (Jan Denise)
Words are memes that can be pronounced. (Daniel Dennett)
Printmaking is very much associated with reproduction, and that's partly a problem of the English language that we use the same word 'print' to describe some watercolour reproduced in 5,000 copies, or an engraving that exists only in that form. (Anne Desmet)
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)
A word is dead / When it is said, / Some say. / I say it just / Begins to live That day. (Emily Dickinson)
I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar! (Benjamin Disraeli)
I found I'm quite happy working on a sentence for an hour or more, searching for the right phrase, the right word. I compare it to the work of a stonecutter – chipping away at the raw material until it's just right, or as right as you can get it. (Harriet Doerr)
Analysis helps patients put their unconscious procedural memories and actions into words and into context, so they can better understand them. (Norman Doidge)
There is no good reason to suppose that whatever can be felt can be expressed in words, or indeed in any articulate form. (Denis Donoghue)
Words are but pictures of our thoughts. (John Dryden)
When he spoke, what tender words he used! So softly, that like flakes of feathered snow, / They melted as they fell. (John Dryden)
The word 'art' interests me very much. If it comes from Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.' (Marcel Duchamp)
-when accused of splitting an infinitive...
I don't just split 'em. When I goes to woik on 'em, I breaks 'em up in little pieces. (Jimmy Durante)
If we understood the awesome power of our words, we would prefer silence to almost anything negative. (Bettie Eadie)
Why do I think reading is important? It is such an effective medium between mind and mind. We think largely in words. A medium made only of words doesn't impose the barrier of any other medium. (Roger Ebert)
Creativity is one of those hypnotic words which are prone to cast a spell upon our understanding and dissolve our thinking into haze. (Albert Einstein)
The arts make vivid the fact that words do not, in their literal form or number, exhaust what we can know. (Elliot W. Eisner)
Our words have wings, but fly not where we would. (George Eliot)
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words. (George Eliot)
My name is only an anagram of toilets. (T. S. Eliot)
It is obvious that we can no more explain a passion to a person who has never experienced it than we can explain light to the blind. (T. S. Eliot)
It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words. (T. S. Eliot)
If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to blind, imprison, and destroy. (Ralph Ellison)
Parts of speech are metaphors because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
What's really good about the word 'art' is that 'art' is a word like 'love,' or 'god,' or whatever. It transcends so many things... (Tracey Emin)
I take sounds and change them into words. (Brian Eno)
I want to rethink 'surrender' as an active verb. (Brian Eno)
I tried out the unfamiliar syllables. They fit. They cracked in my ears like a fist through ice. (Louise Erdrich)
-Middlesex...
I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. (Jeffrey Eugenides)
I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for 'the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.' (Jeffrey Eugenides)
'Twas but my tongue, 'twas not my soul that swore. (Euripides)
How then can I describe in words (limiting symbols to describe the limitless) something that is so pure and so beautiful that it takes me to a place in which all is effortless, ego-less and infinite? (Ian Factor)
The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech. (Clifton Fadiman)
-on Ernest Hemingway...
He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the
dictionary. (William Faulkner)
One evening, intending to ask my host mother to wake me the next morning (okosu), I ask her to violently rape me (okasu). She is very confused. (Timothy Ferriss)
If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell 'friend,' I say to them that something's the matter with the way you spell friend. (Richard Feynman)
I did the traditional thing with falling in love with words, reading books and underlining lines I liked and words I didn't know. (Carrie Fisher)
The faster the word sticks to the thought, the more beautiful is the effect. (Gustave Flaubert)
If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words. (E. M. Forster)
Expanding one's vocabulary concerning the arts is always a pleasure. I didn't realize that what I was doing and how I was thinking when I painted had a name. (Gwen Fox)
All our work, our whole life, is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work... Everything depends on our understanding of them. (Felix Frankfurter)
Well done is better than well said. (Benjamin Franklin)
Here comes the orator! with his flood of words, and his drop of reason. (Benjamin Franklin)
Remember, a word is an invention, a symbol for an idea. Written text began as an artistic representation of a thought or event. (Edward J. Fraughton)
People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choicest words lose their power when they are used to overpower. (Edwin H. Friedman)
Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts. (Robert Fulghum)
God, to me, it seems, / is a verb / not a noun, / proper or improper. (Buckminster Fuller)
A proverb is much matter distilled into few words. (Buckminster Fuller)
As long as a word remains unspoken, you are its master; once you utter it, you are its slave. (Solomon Ibn Gabirol)
American Gods is about 200,000 words long, and I'm sure there are words that are simply in there 'cause I like them. I know I couldn't justify each and every one of them. (Neil Gaiman)
Words are a replacement for the reality. (Ron Gang)
Artspeak is an arcane writing style that can result in a vocabulary of obscurities... Today, some of the more spectacular examples are in artist's statements. (Robert Genn)
Words are small straitjackets when put around creative flourishes and maneuverings. (Robert Genn)
I'll put into words my experience as it is unfolding now in my life... in such a way that I might find comfort in knowing that someone else has the same thoughts and experiences. (Sara Genn)
Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind. (Wolcott Gibbs)
At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all my soul. At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my ignorance upon the shore. (Kahlil Gibran)
I'm as interested in the appearance of letters, and their architecture, and my associations with the forms of letters, as with their meaning. (Graham Gillmore)
I don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak. (Nikki Giovanni)
There are so many people, especially among our comrades, who imagine that words are nothing – on the contrary, isn't it true that saying a thing well is as interesting and as difficult as painting it? (Vincent van Gogh)
You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips. (Oliver Goldsmith)
Let's have some new cliches. (Samuel Goldwyn)
Nothing is easier than saying words. Nothing is harder than living them day after day. (Arthur Gordon)
I am a verb. (Ulysses S. Grant)
Is photography art?... The pure definition of the word 'art' alone is too vague today to break one's brain and soul about it. Let us take a little vacation from this word. (Ernst Haas)
Work is a four-letter word; art and fun have but three. (Hap Hagood)
Words are potent weapons for all causes, good or bad. (Manly P. Hall)
Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment. (Learned Hand)
When I was ten we moved and I decided that none of the names I was then called - Reggie, Bobby, Baa - suited me. Somehow I hit on Rex. I must have heard someone calling for their dog and thought it sounded rather nice. (Rex Harrison)
Expletives serve opinions well which are not sure enough of themselves to risk expression in restrained language. (Henry S. Haskins)
Words excite me enormously. Some of mine are metaphor, allusion and illusion, allegory, personification, inversion, and paradox. I find that sometimes - if I'm lucky - I can go on a roll with titles of as yet invisible paintings that bring the image clearly into my mind's eye. (Margot Hattingh)
Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary; how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
The meanings of words are not in the words, they are in us. (S. I. Hayakawa)
Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts. (Ernest Hemingway)
All our words from loose using have lost their edge. (Ernest Hemingway)
All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. (Ernest Hemingway)
Good words are worth much, and cost little. (George Herbert)
The flavour of words is intensely anti-visual. Strictly speaking painting cannot be written about. (Patrick Heron)
We have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field. (Werner Herzog)
Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. (Hermann Hesse)
When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. (Thomas Wentworth Higginson)
If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge. (Napoleon Hill)
Use the fewest words to sing your song. (Rowland Hill)
I have to use words to say it. Words that violate and betray what they seem to be making possible. Words, in other words, that are sadly not to be trusted. (Selima Hill)
Painters must speak through paint, not through words. (Hans Hofmann)
The whole point of this sentence is to make clear what the whole point of this sentence is. (Douglas R. Hofstadter)
The temple of art is built of words. Painting and sculpture and music are but the blazon of its windows, borrowing all their significance from the light, and suggestive only of the temple's uses. (J. G. Holland)
Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)
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)
If you could say it in words, there'd be no reason to paint. (Edward Hopper)
Once sent out, a word takes wing irrevocably. (Horace)
Words are the basic tools, if you are a writer. (James A. Houston)
Just as 'a picture is worth a thousand words,' the cropping of the picture will determine what those words shall be. (Gordon Hull)
In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be. (Hubert Humphrey)
The acts of painting and sculpting are a little mysterious... semi-automatic, and intuitive. Words get in the way; they confuse and obfuscate the creative process. (Marvin Humphrey)
A picture is worth a thousand nothings if it doesn't leave you speechless. (Phil Hurtig)
Words form the thread on which we string our experiences. (Aldous Huxley)
Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons. (Aldous Huxley)
As a calligrapher I paint with words. I tell my students that we are artists who interpret words, expressing the emotion that the words evoke on paper. (Carrie Imai)
The soul has words as petals. (Edmond Jabes)
How could an argument soothe or settle a controversy when every word is a nest for a bird of doubt? (Edmond Jabes)
It's a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word. (Andrew Jackson)
Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. (Henry James)
I am fond of lovely old words like 'locomotive.' (Tove Jansson)
Too often energy is taken from us by talking before we think, never taking the time to contemplate things, and then never doing anything to act upon our words. Words spew out in an oral version of MTV images. (Carol Jessen)
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer... interior decorating... the fabric of the curtains, of the sofa. But to me, design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product... (Steve Jobs)
-on self-publishing...
Get yourself a good copy-editor. Nothing says 'amateur' more than poor spelling and grammar. (Michael Chesley Johnson)
To make dictionaries is dull work. (Samuel Johnson)
I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas... (Samuel Johnson)
Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use. (Wendell Johnson)
As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. (June Jordan)
The reverse process is extremely important to me - that artistic images can inspire to words and different myths, and that in certain cultures this process has been the normal relation between images and words. (Asger Jorn)
It does not require many words to speak the truth. (Chief Joseph)
I fear those big words which make us so unhappy. (James Joyce)
Line, Form, Space, and Colour are used as words to weave a painting together and to make sense of and to communicate feelings. It should have a rhythm, a focal point and a balance. (Jyotsna Kadam)
In argument, similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing. (Franz Kafka)
The word 'question' is derived from the Latin quaerere 'to seek,' which is the same root as the word for quest. A creative life is a continued quest, and good questions are useful guides. (Paul Kauffman)
-New York Magazine...
I came to understand that the words executive and corporate never belong next to the word chef. (Thomas Keller)
It seems to me the various art forms are at varying stages of spiritual development, which I take to be a progression from identification with finite biology to a union with infinite physics. Dangling from the lowest rung of Jacob's ladder are the verbal modes of expression. (Randy Kentfield)
- The Dharma Bums...
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. (Jack Kerouac)
Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking. (Baron John Maynard Keynes)
The words that enlighten the soul are more precious than jewels. (Hazrat Inayat Khan)
Words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out. (Stephen King)
Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
In England, it's now Sir Ben. Mister has just disappeared. It's not even on my passport anymore. They've taken Mister away from me. (Ben Kingsley)
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. (Rudyard Kipling)
Words, as symbols for thoughts, are too precious to squander. (Brian Knowles)
Words really flattering are not those which we prepare but those which escape us unthinkingly. (Ninon de L'Enclos)
One who is caught in thought loses one's original nature. All he knows are words and descriptions. When he sees the actual thing, he fails to perceive it. (Dalai Lama)
I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices – made up of likings and dislikings. (Charles Lamb)
The words that come direct from the people are the greatest... If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes. (Dorothea Lange)
-trying to find words to describe a Northern Shrike...
Tasteful. Refined. A slick man for all times. (James Fenwick Lansdowne)
I love seeing how words turn into skills, just as demonstrations turn into paintings. (Jamie Lavin)
I know it's good when the words come to me and I don't search for them. (Margaret Lawrence)
At the beginning there was the Word; at the end just the Cliche. (Stanislaw Jerzy Lec)
A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it... By using words well they strengthen their souls. (Ursula K. LeGuin)
The one word you should forget when you start a new project is the word 'I' - you need to replace that word 'I' with the idea of 'everybody else.' (Adam Leipzig)
Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don't compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest. (Sam Levenson)
During the '70s I was interested in words and meaning as a way of making art. (Sol LeWitt)
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I ever met. (Abraham Lincoln)
The fewer the words, the better the prayer. (Martin Luther)
It's the kind of language used extensively in the educational profession. Long words and complex sentences are intended to add importance to something unimportant. (Jack Mabley)
It is a common delusion that you make things better by talking about them. (Dame Rose Macaulay)
-on Tom Thomson...
He never gave utterance in words to his feelings of the glories of nature. Words were not his instruments of expression - colour was the only medium open to him. (James M. MacCallum)
Sharing words with someone you have never met is like observing a shadow, without seeing the whole person; the place where my shadow touches theirs, is the place where our words meet, and it is in that place where wonderful exchanges can take place. (Alison Mackie)
Poets... are literal-minded men who will squeeze a word till it hurts. (Archibald MacLeish)
How strangely do we diminish a thing as soon as we try to express it in words. (Maurice Maeterlinck)
No object is stuck with its name so irrevocably that one cannot find another which suits it better. (Rene Magritte)
'Go directly to work' means... when an idea strikes, you drop everything and when your work bell tolls, you answer it. (Eric Maisel)
Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words? (Marcel Marceau)
I just think it's a blessing that I was able to have the gift of words and to be able to put them into music. I was given a great gift all the way around. I didn't ever have to really go out and look for songs, you know. (Teena Marie)
Everything that goes into my mouth seems to make me fat; everything that comes out of my mouth embarrasses me. (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
-Beatrice & Virgil, 2010...
Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field - but they're all we have. (Yann Martel)
When it comes to the words we read, write, speak and hear each day, every one of us is an expert. (Katherine Connor Martin)
Innocence can be redefined and called stupidity. Honesty can be called gullibility. Candor becomes lack of common sense. Interest in your work can be called cowardice. Generosity can be called soft-headedness, and observe: the former is disturbing... (Abraham Maslow)
We say that the words were smooth, caressing, hard, sharp, and so on: all words that refer to body touching. Indeed we can kill or elate with words as body experiences. (Humberto R. Maturana)
I would prefer a phrase that was easy and unaffected to a phrase that was grammatical. (W. Somerset Maugham)
-to William Moore...
I don't want to see any art-writing gobbledygook or overblown words in an essay about me. If a smaller, simpler word will do - use it. (Doris McCarthy)
Oh, what tortured webs we've woven from the inflax of bilinguist looms! (Michael McDevitt)
Too many words spoil the poem. (John McEnulty)
It took man thousands of years to put words down on paper, and his lawyers still wish he wouldn't. (Mignon McLaughlin)
Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it. (Marshall McLuhan)
The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way. (Marshall McLuhan)
The words of the scholar are to be understood. The words of the master are not to be understood. They are to be listened to as one listens to the wind in the trees and the sound of the river and the song of the bird. They will awaken something within the heart that is beyond all knowledge. (Anthony de Mello)
To use only the words known to the least knowledgeable reader is to embrace a slow erosion of the language. You want to paint with the full palette of colors available. (Peter Meltzer)
Kindly words do not enter so deeply into men as a reputation for kindness. (Mencius)
The plain people, hereafter as in the past, will continue to make their own language, and the best that grammarians can do is to follow after it, haltingly, and not often with much insight into it. (H. L. Mencken)
My own words take me by surprise and teach me what to think. (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)
Describing art is a bit like trying to write a poem. It's a feeling that is so intense, big words seem necessary. Metaphor becomes a way to describe the indescribable. A poem that says, "the sun came up / it was pretty / I really liked it" may be what happened. But how do we create the wonder we felt? One man's gibberish is another man's poem. (Kitsune Miko)
Never use the words 'suddenly' or 'all hell broke loose'... (Henry Miller)
If I want a word, I make it. I don't like combustion. It's too quiet. I have some stuff in a state of combustication. (Julius Sumner Miller)
'Travel reboots.' A two-word sentence that conveys so much. (Peg Miller)
It is said that the American vocabulary has declined by half in the past few decades. It's a tragic instance of desertification following upon monocultural commodity production, the clear-cutting of written and spoken English. (Stephanie Mills)
If the English language had been properly organized... then there would be a word which meant both 'he' and 'she' and I could write, 'If John or Mary comes, heesh will want to play tennis,' which would save a lot of trouble. (A. A. Milne)
Words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold. (Navarre Scott Momaday)
And people make fun of me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you? (Lucy Maud Montgomery)
- Life Words, poem...
Words are written, / The hurt of yesterday / Is the pain of today / The scars of tomorrow. / Words are written. (Stephen Morris)
Word lessons, in particular the wouldst couldst shouldst have loved kind, were kept up, with much warlike thrashing, until I had committed the whole of French, Latin, and English grammars to memory... (John Muir)
In connection with the reading lessons, we were called on to recite parts of them with the rules over and over again, as if all the regular and irregular incomprehensible verb stuff was poetry. (John Muir)
Talking about painting is like dancing about architecture. (Martin Mull)
It has not been for nothing that the word has remained man's principal toy and tool: without the meanings and values it sustains, all man's other tools would be worthless. (Lewis Mumford)
Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words, a multitude of words connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me. (Gloria Naylor)
And I watch my words from a long way off. / They are more yours than mine. / They climb on my old suffering like ivy. (Pablo Neruda)
You can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend... I bow to them... I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down... I love words so much... The unexpected ones... The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop... (Pablo Neruda)
- Memoirs...
I stalk certain words... I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish... I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... Everything exists in the word. (Pablo Neruda)
A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
One's feelings waste themselves in words. They ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results. (Florence Nightingale)
Word definition disorder is chewing this artist's inventions... (Alex Nodopaka)
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way – things I had no words for. (Georgia O'Keeffe)
I am uncomfortable with words - my paintings are perhaps my most honest and legitimate statement. (Daphne Odjig)
To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it. (Mary Oliver)
I'm one of the cliches that has grown up. (Charles Olson)
Even as I write, strange words come back to
me. I don't know what half of them mean - I most likely never did - but I must have
heard them so often, long, long ago, that
they are firmly planted in my brain. (Sir William Orpen)
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)
The moment you enter into the world of words you start falling away from that which is. The more you enter into language, the farther you are away from existence. (Osho)
The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'Check enclosed.' (Dorothy Parker)
Think in terms of images and words. They can be mighty powerful when they are fitted together properly. (Gordon Parks)
Words are humanity's greatest natural resource, but most of us have trouble figuring out how to put them together. Words aren't cheap. They are very precious. (Katherine Paterson)
Uncommon things must be said in common words, if you would have them to be received in less than a century. (Coventry Patmore)
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)
Faithful to the word given and the idea had. (Fernando Pessoa)
'Dontopedology' is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, which I've practised for many years. (Prince Philip)
We take in the words and move on, but are somehow changed by them... (Karen Phinney)
Something holy, that's it. It's a word something like that we should be able to use, but people would take it in the wrong way. You ought to be able to say that a painting is as it is, with its capacity to move us, because it is as though it were touched by God. But people would think it a sham. And yet that is what's nearest to the truth. (Pablo Picasso)
Words have a longer life than deeds. (Pindar)
We have in our head something called story grammar. We see the world as a series of episodes rather than logical propositions... In our serious society, storytelling is seen as being soft. But people process the world through story. (Daniel H. Pink)
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something. (Plato)
Saying 'yes' doesn't mean I don't know how to say no, and saying 'please' doesn't mean I am waiting for permission. (Amy Poehler)
My spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling, but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. (Winnie the Pooh)
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound / Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. (Alexander Pope)
At ev'ry word a reputation dies. (Alexander Pope)
A picture paints a thousand words. (English proverb)
Let the words of another praise you and not your own. (English proverb)
Works are harder than words. (Latin proverb)
Are my synapses senilifying or my ideas deidentifying? Am I becoming derealistified in my dotification? (Faith Puleston)
Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few. (Pythagoras)
The oldest, shortest words - 'yes' and 'no' - are those which require the most thought. (Pythagoras)
No progressive knowledge will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless power given to words of a certain import. (Thomas de Quincey)
Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words. (Francois Rabelais)
Since we know what things are and we have words which name the things we observe, this actually prevents us from looking longer and more completely... to see the appearance of the visual world. (Tiit Raid)
Words are great, but seeing is more primal than language and smelling more primal still. (Stella Reinwald)
Words should be only clothes, carefully custom-made to fit the thought. (Jules Renard)
You don't talk about paintings, you look at them. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
Every misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer's reputation. (Agnes Repplier)
-to students of the Royal Academy, 1790...
I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place, might be the name of - Michael Angelo. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)
Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life. (Jean Paul Richter)
Words not only affect us temporarily; they change us, they socialize or unsocialize us. (David Riesman)
Those people who recognize that the imagination is reality's master we call sages, and those who act upon it we call artists or lunatics. (Tom Robbins)
If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought. (Dennis Roch)
There's no denying the power of words. To convince, to entertain, to inspire. (Scott Roeben)
Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness. (Jim Rohn)
I've learned... that one should keep his words both soft and tender, because tomorrow he may have to eat them. (Andy Rooney)
I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: 'No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.' (Eleanor Roosevelt)
Never question the beauty of what you are saying because someone reacts with pain, judgment, criticism. It just means they have not heard you. (Marshall Rosenberg)
If you need three adjectives to describe something, then you've probably chosen the wrong something. (Roger Rosenblatt)
Remote control. Ingenious contradiction of terms. Fits like a handshake. Aims like a gun. (Roger Rosenblatt)
A picture is worth a thousand words. So draw a picture of the Gettysburg address. (Leo Rosten)
If a picture speaks a thousand words, we may need to choose our words more carefully. (Rick Rotante)
Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
The combination of pictures and words together can be really effective, and I began to realise in my career that unless I wrote my own words, then my message was diluted. (Galen Rowell)
The best of us must sometimes eat our words. (J. K. Rowling)
Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love. (Don Miguel Ruiz)
Traditional words are just babbling in that presence, and babbling is a substitute
for sight. (Rumi)
When I began painting, all my paintings were of words which were gutteral utterances like Smash, Boss, Eat. Those words were like flowers in a vase. (Edward Ruscha)
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. (John Ruskin)
I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible. (Bertrand Russell)
I don't like this word abstract... but I use it because people... have an idea what I'm talking about. (Robert Ryman)
It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English – up to 50 words used in correct context – no human has been reported to have learned dolphinese. (Carl Sagan)
- The Little Prince...
I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
He suffered occasionally from a rush of words to the head. (Herbert Samuel)
I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it. (Carl Sandburg)
Although they are only breath, words which I command are immortal. (Sappho)
I suppose I envy painters because they can meditate on form and structure, on color and light, and not concern themselves with human torment and chaos. It is restful even to imagine expression without words. (May Sarton)
When our spelling is perfect, it's invisible. But when it's flawed, it prompts strong negative associations. (Marilyn vos Savant)
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog. (Friedrich Von Schlegel)
Each stroke on the canvas represents a word... a word that contributes to the statement on the canvas. (Mona Schlesinger)
When we are bursting with some wordless experience, Art is our voice, the song of the heart. (Richard Schmid)
When people see my images, a lot of times they will say, 'Oh my God.' Have you ever wondered what that meant? The 'oh' means it caught your attention, it makes you present, it makes you mindful. The 'my' means it connects with something deep inside your soul, it creates a gateway for your inner voice to rise up and be heard. And God, 'God' is that personal journey we all want to be on, to be inspired, to feel like we are connected to a universe that celebrates life. (Louis Schwartzberg)
Watching Dylan's eyes as he searches for these words, you see it all happening there... (Martin Scorsese)
If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary. (David Sedaris)
So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads. (Dr. Seuss)
Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process. (Peter Shaffer)
How you ought properly to spell 'fish' in English: 'goti' ('g' as in 'laugh,' 'o' as in 'women,' and 'ti' as in 'dictionary'). (George Bernard Shaw)
I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words. (Georges Simenon)
Since there are no words involved, doing art is a direct connection between heart and mind. (Helen Ormiston Simpson)
When you think about it, words can break your heart, or they can change your day. (Anna Deavere Smith)
Playing with words can deliver you that same concussive heart to head battle, hitting you square in the heart and then knocking your mind back with the meat of meaning. (Lynda Gaelyn Smith)
I think 'lunch' is one of the funniest words in the world. (Stephen Sondheim)
It is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. (Robert Southey)
How often misused words generate misleading thoughts. (Herbert Spencer)
-I'd rather be in the studio
Your art has never spoken for itself... you might find what others say about your art is to your liking, but more than likely you will wish you had found the words for yourself... (Alyson B. Stanfield)
I have no interest in the printed word. I would continue to write if there were no writing and no print. I put my words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read. (John Steinbeck)
When you focus so much on the word, you tend to neglect the realm of silence. (David Steindl-Rast)
To describe happiness is to diminish it. (Stendhal)
Speech and prose are not the same thing. They have different wave-lengths, for speech moves at the speed of light, where prose moves at the speed of the alphabet, and must be consecutive and grammatical and word-perfect. Prose cannot gesticulate. Speech can sometimes do nothing else. (James Stephens, author)
In the world of words the imagination is one of the forces of nature. (Wallace Stevens)
Here's the point to be made - there are no synonyms. There are no two words that mean exactly the same thing. (Theodore Sturgeon)
My work is about emotions for which I have no words. (Robert Sturman)
Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style. (Jonathan Swift)
Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move. (Arthur Symons)
The words 'far, far away' had always a strange charm. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er, / Like coarsest clothes against the cold. (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless. (Mother Teresa)
We use the word 'hope' perhaps more often than any other word in the vocabulary: 'I hope it's a nice day.' 'Hopefully, you're doing well.' 'So how are things going along? Pretty good. Going to be good tomorrow? Hope so.' (Studs Terkel)
-on his painting Holocaust...
Those things are inextricable bound up in my mind, with words I make an image and vice versa. (Jan Theuninck)
Art is one of the dirtiest words in our language; it's mucked up with all kinds of meanings. There's the art of plumbing; there's the art of almost anything that you can say. (Wayne Thiebaud)
The word 'cool' just sits back and keeps getting used generation after generation and lets the whole history of the language roll off its back. (Robert Thompson)
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. (Henry David Thoreau)
The most attractive sentences are not perhaps the wisest, but the surest and soundest. (Henry David Thoreau)
Language... 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)
Colour is a universal language so requires no words... (Sheila Timmins)
I am told that I talk in shorthand and then smudge it. (J. R. R. Tolkien)
The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God. (Leo Tolstoy)
Logically there is nothing new to say about the New. Or maybe it's just a problem of articulating unfamiliar perceptions. (David Toop)
Perhaps the most important word in success and happiness is the word, 'ask.' (Brian Tracy)
When I speak now, my experience in art wells up so articulately that I am surprised even while I am talking. I move around a podium as easily as if it were my living room and although I am keyed up I am not anxious. I feel as if I were doing what I should be doing - the feeling I have when intent in my studio. (Anne Truitt)
If conversation be an art, like painting, sculpture, and literature, it owes its most power charm to nature; and the least shade of formality or artifice destroys the effect of the best collection of words. (Henry Theodore Tuckerman)
When I say beautiful things, I'm not necessarily living them; when I live them, the beautiful thing is that words aren't necessary. (Brock Tully)
A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt. (Mark Twain)
I respect a man who knows how to spell a word more than one way. (Mark Twain)
The difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between the lightning and the lightning-bug. (Mark Twain)
Graffiti is linear and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls. But in my paintings it's more lyrical. (Cy Twombly)
The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words? He is the one I would like to talk to. (Chuang Tzu)
Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good. (Lao Tzu)
Eschew Obfuscation. (Author unknown)
We hope the 'real' person behind the words will be revealed as ignominiously as a shapeless snail without its shapely shell. (John Updike)
Men and words are ready made, and you, O Painter, if you do not know how to make your figures move, are like an orator who knows not how to use his words. (Leonardo da Vinci)
One great use of words is to hide our thoughts. (Voltaire)
Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life. (Voltaire)
i do not put Collers what do not Belong. I Think it spoils The pictures. There have Been a lot of paintins spoiled By putin Collers where They do not Blong. (Alfred Wallis)
Art is another word for Love-Feelings-Life and is as personal as a heArt Beat. (Gary Walters)
As a compliment, the word 'artist' should never be used as a self-descriptive word; name your discipline. (Coulter Watt)
One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die. (Evelyn Waugh)
We should constantly use the most common, little, easy words (so they are pure and proper) which our language affords. (John Wesley)
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street. (E. B. White)
The young writer should learn to spot them: words that at first glance seem freighted with delicious meaning, but that soon burst in the air, leaving nothing but a memory of bright sound. (E. B. White)
I dislike the word 'emerging artist.' Emerging connotes to me an alligator coming up from the water. I consider all artists to be artists, not rising, emerging, amateur, beginning, but the real thing. (Jack White)
Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice. (Alfred North Whitehead)
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything. (Walt Whitman)
Sometimes everything has to be inscribed across the heavens so you can find the one line already written inside you. (David Whyte)
Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds. (Elie Wiesel)
-introducing an instrumental song...
This is the most autobiographical song I've ever written. I'm thankful I had the presence of mind never to put any words to it. (Bennett Williams)
No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world. (Robin Williams)
The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It's inflammatory. (Tennessee Williams)
I am growing most weary of the dalliance of words that my computer enables. (David Wayne Wilson)
One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.' (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
So, a word is worth a thousand pictures? (Bruce Wood)
Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart... (William Wordsworth)
A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. (William Wordsworth)
...rhetoric is will doing the work of imagination. (William Butler Yeats)
Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses. (William Butler Yeats)
Words are merely words until we place our heart into them. (Miles Patrick Yohnke)
The evolution of words is now beyond the quippant. It is now the honest approach of definition. (Jan Zawadzki)
- On Writing Well...
If a good word already exists, there is no need to invent something painful. (William K. Zinsser)
Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon. (William K. Zinsser)
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