Language Words Quotations

The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.

Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.

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.

We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

You cannot write in more than one language. Words don't come out as well.

Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.

Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I've seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges.

A man reacheth not to excellence with one language.

As a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellence with one tongue.

It is with words as with sunbeams-the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

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.

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.