To Words Quotes

#1. Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.

Jean-Paul Sartre

#2. We cling to words like drowning men to straws. But still we drown, we drown.

Anna Kamienska

#3. The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle of a sentence.

John Green

#4. It seemed to her sometimes that this was the only fight that mattered: the struggle to take the world's chaos and make it mean something, to put it to words.

Joe Hill

#5. You've grown tired of your four-year-old pointing to words and asking, "What does this say?" Apparently it's not okay to respond to them with, "It says, 'Learn how to read.'

Jim Gaffigan

#6. We've become slaves to words like 'local,' 'fresh,' and 'seasonal.' We all want to be Thomas Jefferson's agrarian hero, but sustainable food is a difficult beast.

Barton Seaver

#7. take care, in reading the writings of philosophers or hearing their speeches, that you do not attend to words more than things, nor get attracted more by what is difficult and curious than by what is serviceable and solid and useful.

Plutarch

#8. Punctuation is to words as cartilage is to bone, permitting articulation and bearing stress.

John Lennard

#9. I would literally never think about melody. I never thought people listened to melody because I listen to words.

Nina Nesbitt

#10. I owe it all to words and art, the peace that came with a flicker of a pen silenced the suffering; eased the pain and life that was once filled with burden became sane again. It Became meaningful.
Art does matter, it made me, when the world changed me.

Nikki Rowe

#11. Men are ready to suffer anything from others or from heaven itself, provided that, when it comes to words, they are untouched.

Giacomo Leopardi

#12. He had moved from thought to words, and now from words to actions.

George Orwell

#13. When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That's bullshit! They're just hiding their bullshit!

Robert McKee

#14. a hymn then
not to birds but to words
which themselves feel
like feather and wing
and light, as if it were
on the delicacy of
such sweet syllables
that flocks take flight.

Kei Miller

#15. Do not try to understand. What I feel for you cannot be limited to words. I know that you have moved on with your life, yet I stand here, frozen in the midst of your spirit.

Leigh Hershkovich

#16. I had dedicated my life to words. But sometimes, words are not needed.

Jordan L. Hawk

#17. There is a certain quality to words that when strung in a certain way
has an almost hypnotic effect.

Lang Leav

#18. Sometimes a perfect memory can be ruined if put to words.

Nova Ren Suma

#19. Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature - be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Moliere.

Michael Mando

#20. I wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something she could not put into words - something prior to words that she could not grasp within herself and which therefore had no hope of ever turning into words.

Haruki Murakami

#21. Once I unlocked the mystery of the alphabet that led to words, a multitude of words connecting me to the world, there was no stopping me.

Gloria Naylor

#22. You can listen to carpenters talk for hours in Ireland. The people have a relationship to words that I don't think you will run into anyplace in the world.

Steve Earle

#23. Her soul belongs to words and books. Every time she reads, she is home.

Anonymous

#24. I'm creative because I did an icon navigation while everyone else on the planet sticks to words? No, it just means I didn't want to stick to convention. If anything you can call it rebellious but certainly not creative.

Paul Scriven

#25. Any opinion writer worth his salt would have rejected the quaint notion that certain eternally aggrieved identity groups have exclusive linguistic rights to words in the English language.

Ilana Mercer

#26. The public is totally illiterate in America. It can't read at all. It's absolutely insensitive to words.

James Purdy

#27. When it comes to words, rather than using our own voice, authentic and unpracticed, we steal someone else's to shield our fear.

Terry Tempest Williams

#28. All the world, as a matter of fact, is a mosaic of little places invisible to the powers that be. And in the eyes of the powers that be all these invisible places do not add up to a visible place. They add up to words and numbers.

Wendell Berry

#29. Your true meaning cannot be grasped or captured by words. You can never be equated with any words, because you are prior to words.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

#30. He that contemns a shrew to the degree of not descending to words with her does worse than beat her.

Roger L'Estrange

#31. The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.

Don DeLillo

#32. I never knew what to say."
"Really? You seem comfortable enough with words."
"I have a formal and aesthetic relationship to words.

Benjamin Alire Saenz

#33. 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.

Aldous Huxley

#34. A book is from your heart and mind, it is your love put to words.

Michael Anthony

#35. Man, the feeling of the make is something that I can't put to words, it's the very best feeling in the world. I just chase that, it's a very real feeling and straight up, I am addicted to it.

Jeremy Jones

#36. Storms are sex. They exist alongside and are indifferent to words and description and dissection.

Kevin Patterson

#37. Damn it, I'm angry now. I do believe life is loss, I do, but my suffering-to-words-ratio was out of control: lying around composing nothing but these - righteous arias, month after month, these tawdry special pleas.

Gwendoline Riley

#38. I like to write about painting because I think visually. I see my writing as blocks of color before it forms itself. I think I also care about painting because I'm not musical. Painting to me is not a metaphor for writing, but something people do that can never be reduced to words.

A.S. Byatt

#39. I still CONTINUE SAYING "Honest"... and "Honesty.." sounds like addiction to words.

Deyth Banger

#40. A natural hierarchy is simply an order of increasing wholeness, such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms, or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes part of the whole of the next. In other words, natural hierarchies are composed of holons.

Ken Wilber

#41. The kingdom of God is not in words. Words are only incidental and can never be fundamental. When evangelicalism ceased to emphasize fundamental meanings and began emphasizing fundamental words, and shifted from meaning to words and from power to words, they began to go down hill.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#42. The failure in reading -the omnipresent verbalism- of those who have not been trained in the arts of grammar and logic shows how lack of such discipline results in slavery to words rather than mastery of them.

Mortimer J. Adler

#43. I think that being an editor, someone who works with words, is very good training for being a translator because it trains you to be attentive to words in a very specific, very concrete, very literal way.

Ann Goldstein

#44. I am an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry ... I still do feel that a poet has a duty to words, and that words can do wonderful things, and it's too bad to just let them lie there without doing anything with and for them.

Gwendolyn Brooks

#45. She read books of poetry, though they had lately begun to stoke her fury. It was all very well for these poets, who wandered off to have adventures and then could string them to words, to music. Anything she might write would be formless, a creature of rage and stormcloud. No music there.

Ilana C. Myer

#46. I let the insults go by. A good swordsman doesn't pay attention to words in a fight.

Ellen Kushner

#47. He who replies to words of doubt doth put the light of knowledge out.

William Blake

#48. The reverse process is extremely important to me - that artistic images can inspire to words and different myths, and that in certain cultures this process has been the normal relation between images and words.

Asger Jorn

#49. 'Writing' is the wrong way to describe what happens to words in a movie. First, you put down words. Then you rehearse them with actors. Then you shoot the words. Then you edit them. You cut a lot of them, you fudge them, you make up new ones in voice-over. Then you cut it and throw it all away.

Peter Landesman

#50. Taking your language into my soul, feeling it separate from sentences to words burning with flight, 'til all I have left are meaningless letters pushing fire through my veins. Words can draw blood if you're very, very careful. - Broken Places

Rachel Thompson

#51. She would have liked to sit upon a rock and listen to words, not of any man, but detached, mysterious, poetic words that she alone would interpret through some sense inherited from sleep.

Patrick White

#52. Writing poetry is like an opiate. When you get hooked on a blank page in the notebook, that attracts you like fireflies in the night, and you just have to translate your thoughts into words.
I'm addicted to words.

Stjepan Varesevac Cobets

#53. I have created a life style that supports contemplation, service to words.

Bell Hooks

#54. Going beyond thoughts is merely to reduce the multiplicity of your thought.
Thoughts lead to words, words to language, language to action.
Action to realization, and back again to thoughts.
For the mind is made up of words, language and logic, until it dissolves into consciousness.

Gian Kumar

#55. Most of us are addicted to non-active reading. The outstanding fault of the non-active or undemanding reader is his inattention to words, and his consequent failure to come to terms with the author.

Mortimer J. Adler

#56. Men don't respond to words. They respond to no contact.

Sherry Argov

#57. Vocabularian (n.) One who pays too much attention to words. In the past I have been accused by various parties of paying too much attention to words. Which is true, I suppose; but what else do I have to pay attention to? Vomiturient

Ammon Shea

#58. Committing your thoughts and feelings to words is like putting your soul on a plate and hoping the diners will like what they eat.

Fennel Hudson

#59. No progressive knowledge will ever medicine that dread misgiving of a mysterious and pathless power given to words of a certain import.

Thomas De Quincey

#60. I'm definitely using different parts of myself, but I think when it comes down to words and melodies, I can't really force anything too much.

Lia Ices

#61. Phut Phat knew, at an early age, that humans were an inferior breed. They were unable to see in the dark. They ate and drank unthinkable concoctions. And they had only five senses; the pair who lived with Phut Phat could not even transmit their thoughts without resorting to words.

Lilian Jackson Braun

#62. Interesting capitalization,' I said.
'Yeah. I'm a big believer in random capitalization. The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle.

John Green

#63. The root difficulty in all cases was the state of being blind and deaf to words
not seeing the words for the prose. Being adults, they had forgotten what every child understands, which is giving and taking a meaning is not automatic and inevitable

Jacques Barzun

#64. We always think there's enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like 'if'.

Fredrik Backman

#65. What we call 'morals' is simply blind obedience to words of command.

Havelock Ellis

#66. I'm addicted to words. The only way to get my fix is to write and read.

K.D. Green

#67. When it comes to words Mamma says, If they are not good, then maybe they should not be said.

Annette Bridges

#68. I know nothing but my open body giving birth to words. Until the pain is over. Until the end of living. Until the end of utterance. Since they have condemned me to say what they want to forget.

Jeanne Hyvrard

#69. When I'm creating characters, I definitely think of theme songs. Writing for me is very visual, so I sometimes think of it in terms of a movie with a soundtrack, and try to transfer that to words.

Marisha Pessl

#70. And it was the kind of thing that loses the most important nuances when reduced to words. He had never told anyone about it, and he probably never would.

Haruki Murakami

#71. Men don't respond to words. What they respond to is "no contact".

Sherry Argov

#72. She took the facts and in a natural way charged them with tension; she intensified reality as she reduced it to words, she injected it with energy.

Elena Ferrante

#73. I try to say what I feel
Without thinking about what I feel.
I try to place words right next to my idea
So that I won't need a corridor
Of thought leading to words.

Fernando Pessoa

#74. Be careful with words, they're dangerous. Be wary of them. They begat either demons or angels. It's up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as giving free rein to words

Elie Wiesel

#75. Scientific observation then has established that education is not what the teacher gives; education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment.

Maria Montessori

#76. I jerk off inside books, and give life to words, leaving concepts stuck together you've probably never heard

Immortal Technique

#77. People are losing the capacity to listen to words or follow ideas.

Orson Welles

#78. What does my soul look like to you?' 'I couldn't reduce it to words if I tried, but its beauty is unsurpassed.

Lauren Kate

#79. Music gives 'wings' to words.

Yip Harburg

#80. I almost can't even put to words how happy I am that I got married.

Mike Birbiglia

#81. Simply put, the relative age of a philosophical perspective has nothing to do with its veracity. It is pure illusion to imagine that just because a view of life was held and put to words long ago, that it is more valid.

Thomas Daniel Nehrer

#82. Your ears are not simply for hearing tuneful sounds, mellow and sweetly played in harmony: you should also listen to laughter and weeping, to words flattering and acrimonious, to merriment and distress, to the language of men and to the roars and barking of animals.

Seneca.

#83. Sri Yukteswar showed no special consideration to those who happened to be powerful or accomplished; neither did he slight others for their poverty or illiteracy. He would listen respectfully to words of truth from a child, and openly ignore a conceited pundit.

Paramahansa Yogananda

#84. The British feel of blues has been hard, rather than emotional. Far too much emphasis on 12 bar, too little attention to words, far too little originality.

Alexis Korner

#85. Nothing in nature is as simple as it sometimes seems when reduced to words.

Hal Borland

#86. It is true, as John Bunyan said, that God infinitely prefers a heart without words to words without a heart when we pray.

Peter Kreeft

#87. You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.

Lois McMaster Bujold

#88. I was struck by the way in which meanings are historically attached to words: it is so accidental, so remote, so twisted. A word is like a schoolgirl's room
a complete mess
so the great thing is to make out a way of seeing it all as ordered, as right, as inferred and following.

William H Gass

#89. I am a 'professional word seller'..I sell 'WORDS' for a 'living'...
'LIVING' with 'empowering' words is a 'Choice' we make..
'CHOICE' comes via the meaning we give to words we use..
'MEANING' comes from understanding 'life'...

Abha Maryada Banerjee

#90. My mother's journals are a shadow play with mine. I am a woman wedded to words. Words cast a shadow. Without a shadow there is no depth. Without a shadow there is no substance. If we have no shadow, it means we are invisible. As long as I have a shadow, I am alive.

Terry Tempest Williams

#91. The arithmetic is quite simple. Instead of playing Draw Something, fucking draw something! Take the cleverness you apply to Words with Friends and utilize it to make some kick-ass corn bread. Corn Bread with Friends - try that game.

Nick Offerman

#92. It is not that things give meaning to words; it is that meaning makes things "things." It does not make things in their subsistence; but it does make things in their discreteness for the understanding.

Richard M. Weaver

#93. Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.

Jean-Paul Sartre

#94. Events sometimes are the biggest teachers, as opposed to words, lectures, and that kind of thing.

Rush Limbaugh

#95. Your questions refer to words; so I have to talk about words. You say:;: The point isn't the word, but its meaning, and you think of the meaning as a thing of the same kind as the word, though also different from the word. Here the word, there the meaning.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

#96. The heart fools the mind, where eyes went deaf to words, that fell on blinded ears to easy to fall in love.

Anthony Liccione

#97. The paper is my savior, the pen my blood, to words that shed my world.

Anthony Liccione

#98. Nothing about these times makes any sense. Nothing. Putting it to words only makes it sound too simple.

Ralph Webster

#99. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#100. Thoughts to words, words to paper.
A gift we give ourselves, both now and later.

Nancy Fraser