Sunday, June 17, 2018 – The Final Word
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. ~ Herman Melville
Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often. ~ Mark Twain
Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. ~ Joseph Conrad
He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. ~ Joseph Conrad
Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years. ~ Wendell L. Willkie
The word “good” has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man. ~ G. K. Chesterton
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne. ~ Quentin Crisp
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. ~ Henry Brooks Adams
We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. ~ John Locke
What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same. ~ Antonio Porchia
I like the word “indolence.” It makes my laziness seem classy. ~ Bern Williams
Our language is funny – a fat chance and a slim chance are the same thing. ~ J. Gustav White
If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers. ~ Doug Larson
Words signify man’s refusal to accept the world as it is. ~ Walter Kaufmann
There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly. ~ Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Whenever ideas fail, men invent words. ~ Martin H. Fischer
Human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when what we want is to move the stars to pity. ~ Gustave Flaubert
Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. ~ Victor Hugo
To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery. ~ Charles Baudelaire
I feed on good soup, not beautiful language. ~ Moliere
French is the language that turns dirt into romance. ~ Stephen King
In general, every country has the language it deserves. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the decent obscurity of a learned language. ~ Edward Gibbon
Parents should conduct their arguments in quiet, respectful tones, but in a foreign language. You’d be surprised what an inducement that is to the education of children. ~ Judith Martin
A riot is the language of the unheard. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. ~ Lao Tzu
I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain. ~ Jane Wagner
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
A mind enclosed in language is in prison. ~ Simone Weil
Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it. ~ James A. Baldwin
We inhabit a language rather than a country. ~ Emile M. Cioran
A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state. ~ Joseph Brodsky
In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet. ~ Winston Churchill
Every American child should grow up knowing a second language, preferably English. ~ Mignon McLaughlin
Language is a virus from outer space. ~ William S. Burroughs
It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs. ~ Thomas Hardy
Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it. ~ Christopher Morley
Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence. ~ George Steiner
Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language. ~ Alfred North Whitehead
We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. ~ John Locke
One man’s frankness is another man’s vulgarity. ~ Kevin Smith
Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through. ~ Douglas Adams
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking. ~ John Maynard Keynes
Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery. ~ Mark Amidon
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work. ~ Carl Sandburg, New York Times, 13 February 1959
Some guy hit my fender, and I told him, “Be fruitful and multiply,” but not in those words. ~ Woody Allen
Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. ~ Samuel Johnson
Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities. ~ Alfred North Whitehead
Whenever ideas fail, men invent words. ~ Martin H. Fischer
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
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
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. ~ Rudyard Kipling
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
Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap. ~ George Bernard Shaw
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
Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing. ~ Robert Benchley
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. ~ Ansel Adams
Just Above Sunset 