Quotes · Skopia

12 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Words✕clear

Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.

Burnt Norton · 1936

★ 4.5

For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essays: Second Series (Emerson) · 1844

★ 4.4

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Towne v. Eisner · 1918

★ 4.3

Film · Teen (film) · Drama (film) · Teen · Drama

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.

Dead Poets Society · 1989

★ 3.8

Letter · Political writing

Dictionaries are but the depositories of words already legitimated by usage. Society is the work-shop in which new ones are elaborated. When an individual uses a new word, if illformed it is rejected in society, if well-informed, adopted, and, after due time, laid up in the depository of dictionaries.

Thomas Jefferson

1820

★ 3.7

Words being arbitrary must owe their power to association, and have the influence, and that only, which custom has given them. Language is the dress of thought.

Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets · 1779

★ 3.5

Political literature · Philosophical literature

True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.

Leviathan · 1651

★ 2.2

Scripture · Religious literature

It is not what enters the mouth that defiles the person, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles the person.”

Matthew 15:11 · 60

★ 2.1

All words are pegs to hang ideas on.

Henry Ward Beecher

1887

★ 2.0

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

1969

★ 1.9

Interview · Magazine

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.

Paris Review · 1954

★ 1.0

Autobiography and memoir

Words have weight, sound, and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

W. Somerset Maugham

1948

★ 0.9