Using Words Quotes

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

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Teaching

  34 Copy quote

• 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

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

  Samuel Johnson

  Inspirational, Language Words, Plain Language

  In James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 1, p. 471 (6 August 1763, when Boswell said it would be 'terrible' if Johnson should not be able to return speedily from Harwich)

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• He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.

  John Ray

  Writing, Use, Ink

  26 Copy quote

• A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Art, Writing, Mean

  "A Few Words to a Young Writer" by Ursula K. Le Guin, www.ursulakleguin.com. 2008.

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• I've always written very tightly, and there's a good reason for that. There's no point in using words that you're not going to apply.

  Theodore Sturgeon

  Reason, No Point, Written

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• I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.

  Herta Muller

  Long, Silence, Littles

  "The Hunger Angel". Book by Herta Müller, 2012.

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• Knowing how to use your voice so it makes sense to your dog, using words in a way your dog can understand, correcting him without creating fear, praising him properly, and doing it all at the proper time are critical skills to develop if your dog is to learn from you.

  Brian Kilcommons

  Dog, Skills, Voice

  6 Copy quote

• If you commit yourself to the art of poetry, you commit yourself to the task of learning how to see, using words as elements of sight and their sounds as prisms. And to see means to see something worth all the agony of learning how to see.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Art, Mean, Sight

  4 Copy quote

• Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

  Rita Dove

  Gestures, Way, Pacing

  7 Copy quote

• Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.

  Tom Robbins

  Cutting, Magic, Beef

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• Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.

  Anne McCaffrey

  Writing, Together, Story Writers

  13 Copy quote

• You want a hero in the music world? James Brown. He brought a feeling to music without really using words. He's just famous for his sound.

  David Lee Roth

  Hero, Feelings, Sound

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

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• I call her Wild Woman, for those very words, wild and woman, create llamar o tocar a la puerta, the fairy-tale knock at the door of the deep feminine psyche. Llamar o tocar a la puerta means literally to play upon the instrument of the name in order to open a door. It means using words that summon up the opening of a passageway. No matter by which culture a woman is influenced, she understands the words wild and woman, intuitively.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Mean, Doors, Order

  33 Copy quote

• So what's the point of using words nobody else knows or can say comfortably? I just don't understand that.

  Stephen Chbosky

  Knows

  Stephen Chbosky (2013). “The Perks of Being a Wallflower YA edition”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• However, as words become particularized, and as men begin - in however small a way - to use them in personal, arbitrary ways, so their transformation into art begins. It was words of this kind that, descending on me like a swarm of winged insects, seized on my individuality and sought to shut me up within it. Nevertheless, despite the enemy's depredations upon my person, I turned their universality - at once a weapon and a weakness - back on them, and to some extent succeeded in using words to universalize to my own individuality.

  Yukio Mishima

  Art, Men, Individuality

  27 Copy quote

• Siobhan said that when you are writing a book you have to include some descriptions of things. I said that I could take photographs and put them in the book. But she said the idea of a book was to describe things using words so that people could read them and make a picture in their own head.

  Mark Haddon

  Book, Writing, Ideas

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• Mr. Bean is at his best when he is not using words, but I am equally at home in both verbal and nonverbal expression.

  Rowan Atkinson

  Home, Expression, Beans

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• Morality in government begins with officials using words as honestly as possible to describe the truth.

  David Gergen

  Government, Morality, Honestly

  16 Copy quote

• The political writer, then, is the ultimate optimist, believing people are capable of change and using words as one way to try and penetrate the privatism of our lives.

  Cherrie Moraga

  Believe, People, Political

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• I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist's trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous or acroamatic, because you liked the sound of them, you were lost.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Sound, Novelists, Fit

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• Aviation is poetry ... It's the finest kind of moving around, you know, just as poetry is the finest way of using words.

  Jessie Redmon Fauset

  Moving, Flying, Way

  Jessie Redmon Fauset (2013). “Comedy: American Style”, p.108, Courier Corporation

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• Demagogues are so easy to identify. They gesture a lot and speak with pulpit rhythms, using words that ring of religious fervour and god-fearing sincerity. Sincerity with nothing behind it takes so much practice. The practice can always be detected. Repetition. Great attempts to keep your attention on words.

  Frank Herbert

  Religious, Practice, Attention

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• Isn't telling about something-using words, English or Japanese-already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?

  Yann Martel

  World, Invention, This World

  Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.428, Canongate Books

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