Quotes about Words

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.

When you pray, rather let your heart be without words than your words without heart.

Many words do not a good prayer make; what counts is the heartfelt desire to commune with God, and the faith to back it up.

The four-letter word for psychotherapy is 'talk'.

Violence of the tongue is very real- sharper than any knife.

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.

When the style is fully formed, if it has a sweet undersong, we call it beautiful, and the writer may do what he likes in words or syntax.

The masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.

Words are coin. Words alienate. Language is no medium for desire. Desire is rapture, not exchange. It is only by alienating the desired that language masters it. The frenzy of desire in the medium of words yields the mania of the catalogue. I struggle with the proverbs of hell.

Prose, in his experience, calls for many more words than poetry. There is no point in embarking on prose if one lacks confidence that one will be alive the next day to carry on with the task.

The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.