We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

[info][add][mail][note]Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818), letter to John Adams, 1774

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

[info][add][mail][note]Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one.

[info][add][mail][note]Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. (1900 - 1965), speech to Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois, July 21, 1952

Words are the physicians of the mind diseased.

[info][add][mail][note]Aeschylus (525 BC - 456 BC), Prometheus Bound

Language is the source of misunderstandings.

[info][add][mail][note]Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 1944)

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in a few words.

[info][add][mail][note]Aprocrypha

High thoughts must have high language.

[info][add][mail][note]Aristophanes (450 BC - 388 BC), Frogs, 405 B.C.

Grasp the subject, the words will follow.

[info][add][mail][note]Cato the Elder (234 BC - 149 BC)

Use soft words and hard arguments.

[info][add][mail][note]English Proverb

Great literature is simply charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

[info][add][mail][note]Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)

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 instinctively¹ to long words and exhausted² idioms, like a cuttlefish³ spurting⁴ out ink.

[info][add][mail][note]George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

[info][add][mail][note]Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)

For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.

[info][add][mail][note]Ingrid Bengis

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

[info][add][mail][note]Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

Deeds, not words shall speak me.

[info][add][mail][note]John Fletcher (1579 - 1625)

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.

[info][add][mail][note]John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946)

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

[info][add][mail][note]Lewis Thomas (1913 - 1993)

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.

[info][add][mail][note]Lily Tomlin (1939 - )

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.

[info][add][mail][note]Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Canterville Ghost, 1882

Words have a longer life than deeds.

[info][add][mail][note]Pindar (522 BC - 443 BC), Nemean Odes

Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.

[info][add][mail][note]Rita Mae Brown, Starting From Scratch, 1988

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

[info][add][mail][note]Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)

No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.

[info][add][mail][note]Sam Rayburn (1882 - 1961)

Do not accustom⁵ yourself to use big words for little matters.

[info][add][mail][note]Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely⁶ imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

[info][add][mail][note]Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

[info][add][mail][note]Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

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

[info][add][mail][note]William Butler Yeats (1865 - 1939)

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation⁷, but to be understood.

[info][add][mail][note]William Penn (1644 - 1718)

I understand a fury in your words,

But not the words.

[info][add][mail][note]William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Othello", Act 4 scene 2

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

[info][add][mail][note]William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Hamlet", Act 3 scene 3