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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• 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

  73 Copy quote

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

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Running, Communication, Inspiration

  61 Copy quote

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

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Positive, Wise, Wisdom

  73 Copy quote

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

  William Butler Yeats

  Inspirational, Wise, Teamwork

  93 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Teaching

  33 Copy quote

• 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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• Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

  William Shakespeare

  Heaven, Hamlet And Ophelia, Hamlet Revenge

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 3, l. 97

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• When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Sarcastic, War, Sarcasm

  6 Copy quote

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

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Writing, Thoughtful, Reality

  126 Copy quote

• 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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• 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

  Business, Communication, Past

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1840). “The Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Prose and Verse: Complete in One Volume”, p.313

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• 

  Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

  Patrick Rothfuss

  Heart, Men, Fire

  "The Name of the Wind". Book by Patrick Rothfuss, 2007.

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• He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Book, Communication, Humor

  Abraham Lincoln (1992). “The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln”, Plume

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

  Samuel Johnson

  Inspirational, Plain Language, Littles

  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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• As a hawk flieth not high with one wing, even so a man reacheth not to excellence with one tongue.

  Roger Ascham

  Men, Wings, Excellence

  46 Copy quote

• 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

  Levels, Able, Thanks

  Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

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• A man reacheth not to excellence with one language.

  Roger Ascham

  Men, Excellence, Language Acquisition

  6 Copy quote