Language Words Quotes

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  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

  Honesty, Integrity, Writing

  1847; quoted by propagandist and language maven William Safire, New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998.

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• 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

  Writing, Plain Language, Words You Speak

  William Penn (1792). “Fruits of Solitude: In Reflections and Maxims Relating to the Conduct of Human Life”, p.130

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• 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

  Truth, Real, Political Language

  "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

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• If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

  Nelson Mandela

  Leadership, Travel, Crazy

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

  C. S. Lewis

  Communication, Writing, Mean

  74 Copy quote

• Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

  William Butler Yeats

  Inspirational, Wise, Teamwork

  96 Copy quote

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Positive, Wise, Wisdom

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• Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Running, Communication, Inspiration

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

  Robert Southey

  Happiness, Teacher, Teaching

  "A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern" ed. by Tryon Edwards, F. B. Dickerson Company, (p. 52), 1908.

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• No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

  Henry Adams

  Truth, Mean, Men

  The Education of Henry Adams ch. 31 (1907)

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• The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Friendship, Best Friend, True Love

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.114, Penguin

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

  W. H. Auden

  Love, Passion, Poetry

  "Poets at Work" by W. H. Auden, (p. 170), 1948.

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

  Orson Scott Card

  Parenting, Silence, Tongue

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• 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.

  Noam Chomsky

  Law, Generations, Use

  Noam Chomsky (2003). “For Reasons Of State”, p.402, Penguin Books India

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• Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Inspirational, Business, Past

  "New Statesman and Nation" Magazine, July 15, 1933.

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

  George Eliot

  Writing, Simple, Plain Language

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

  Abigail Adams

  Communication, Diversity, Political

  Abigail Adams, John Adams, L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Mary-Jo Kline (1975). “The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784”, p.80, UPNE

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

  George Orwell

  Inspirational, Life, Political Language

  "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

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• 

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

  Rudyard Kipling

  Powerful, Reading, Communication

  Speech, 14 Feb. 1923, in The Times 15 Feb. 1923

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• Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

  George Orwell

  Witty, Peace, Truth

  "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

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

  Ingrid Bengis

  Change, Acting, Action

  Ingrid Bengis (1973). “COMBAT IN THE EROGENOUS ZONE”

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• The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Teaching

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• The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Wisdom, Communication, Philosophical

  Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Proposition 5.6 (1922)

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• Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Writing, Thoughtful, Reality

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• When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Sarcastic, War, Sarcasm

  7 Copy quote