Word

“Be careful what you say—you may have to eat your words.”

I don’t think so much about eating my words as about wearing them. When someone sees me, the words come back to haunt like a miasma around me. No matter how colourful my dress, bad words turn everything grey and muddy brown.

LI

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

--The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
(trans. Edward Fitzgerald, 1st ed.)

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

(Mark Twain)

Words derive their meaning from the surrounding words, just as human beings derive their meaning from interacting with other humans around them.

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Words like winter snowflakes.

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 – Homer (c. 700 B.C.)
 – The Iliad, bk. III, l. 222

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There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.


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 – Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)
 – The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain [1952], st. I

mortar my words
with particles
prepositions
adverbs
and conjunctions

Without another word spoken on either side, the lodger took from his great trunk, a kind of temple, shining as of polished silver, and placed it carefully on the table.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was 32 bits.

I bought one of those Word-A-Day calendars to improve my vocabulary for college.

reify – to regard or treat (an abstraction) as if it had concrete or material existence.

... words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither while they pass, they slip away across the universe...

Think how much acceptance Mary showed when she said:

»Let it be done to me according to thy word.«

Isn't it weird that words work as well as they do? Think about it.

A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a garden full of weeds.