Word Quotes (page 55)
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Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn't a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their own song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their songs instead.
Neil Gaiman
The mere seeing of Miss Sara would have been enough without meat pies. If there was time only for a few words, they were always friendly, merry words that put heart into one...Sara--who was only doing what she unconsciously liked better than anything else, Nature having made her for a giver--had not the least idea what she meant to poor Becky, and how wonderful a benefactor she seemed.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
But anyhow it is true that this, which is our first poem, might very well be our last poem too. It might well be the last word as well as the first word spoken by man about his mortal lot, as seen by merely mortal vision. If the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Trout sat back and thought about the conversation. He shaped it into a story, which he never got around to writing until he was an old, old man. It was about a planet where the language kept turning into pure music, because the creatures there were so enchanted by sounds. Words became musical notes. Sentences became melodies. They were useless as conveyors of information, because nobody knew or cares what the meanings of words were anymore. So leaders in government and commerce, in order to...
Kurt Vonnegut
They believed their words. Everybody shows a respectful deference to certain sounds that he and his fellows can make. But about feelings people really know nothing. We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice mean- except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these illusions.
Joseph Conrad
Will not the very moment of great disillusionment with my brother or sister be incomparably wholesome for me becuase it so thoroughly teaches me that both of us can never live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and deed that really binds us together, the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ? The bright day of Christian community dawns wherever the early morning mists of dreamy visions are lifting
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn't every word I've said, every thought I've thought, everything I've done, been tied up, weighted, chained? And mind you, I know that with all this I don't succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. ...But think how hard I try and how seldom I dare. Think - and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.
Jean Rhys
Whenever a new scholar came to out school, I used to confront him at recess with the following words: 'My name's Tom Bailey: what's your name?' If the name struck me favorably, I shook hands with the new pupil cordially; but if it didn't I would turn on my heel, for I was particular in this point. Such names as Higgins, Wiggins, and Spriggins were deadly afronts to my ear; while Lapgdon, Wallace, Blake, and the like, were passing words to my confidence and esteem.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich