The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Carol Shields1 quote
I've always sensed that language is the great liberator. The fitting phrase, the precise word-these permit us to be more nearly ourselves. — Carol Shields · 1993Jean-Paul Sartre1 quote
Words…are loaded pistols. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1948Jhumpa Lahiri1 quote
Surely it is a magical thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do. — Jhumpa Lahiri · 2012John Steinbeck1 quote
A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. — John Steinbeck · 1954Joseph Conrad1 quote
There is a weird power in a spoken word... And a word carries far—very far—deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space. — Joseph Conrad · 1900Nathaniel Hawthorne1 quote
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 · 1848Richard Ford1 quote
The words we use are the worlds we live in. — Richard Ford · 2014Rudyard Kipling1 quote
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. — Rudyard Kipling · 1923Zadie Smith1 quote
Other people's words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you're going. — Zadie Smith · 2010