Just Words

Sunday, June 7, 2009 – Just Words

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all. ~ Winston Churchill

A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart. ~ Peggy Noonan

The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth. ~ Aldous Huxley

I sometimes marvel at the extraordinary docility with which Americans submit to speeches. ~ Adlai E. Stevenson

Oratory is the power to talk people out of their sober and natural opinions. ~ Joseph Chatfield

Liberty don’t work as good in practice as it does in speeches. ~ Will Rogers

Eating words has never given me indigestion. ~ Winston Churchill

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often. ~ Mark Twain

Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds. ~ Elie Wiesel

You don’t have to be singing about love all the time in order to give love to the people. You don’t have to keep flashing those words all the time. ~ Jimi Hendrix

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

The words of truth are always paradoxical. ~ Lao Tzu

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. ~ Ernest Hemingway

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society. ~ John Adams

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

A politician’s words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience. ~ George Will

Words are loaded pistols. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts. ~ Robert Fulghum

My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire. ~ James Joyce

Some guy hit my fender, and I told him, “Be fruitful and multiply,” but not in those words. ~ Woody Allen

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ~ Ansel Adams

Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words. ~ Samuel Goldwyn

I put the words down and push them a bit. ~ Evelyn Waugh

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them. ~ Aldous Huxley

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. ~ Rudyard Kipling

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. ~ Victor Hugo

Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me. ~ Black Elk

I live on good soup, not on fine words. ~ Moliere

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. ~ Henry James

It took man thousands of years to put words down on paper, and his lawyers still wish he wouldn’t. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. ~ Robert Frost

Words are a wonderful form of communication, but they will never replace kisses and punches. ~ Ashleigh Brilliant

People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they’ll have good voice boxes in case there’s ever anything really meaningful to say. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

English is the perfect language for preachers because it allows you to talk until you think of what to say. ~ Garrison Keillor

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. ~ Will Durant

Never miss a good chance to shut up. ~ Will Rogers