Word

Words are like prodigies. They may want to stay inside where it is safe and warm but they'll never live if they never play outside...and find themselves lost in the cold.

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Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

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 – Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
 – An Essay on Criticism [1711], pt. II, l. 109

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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We shall never understand one another until we reduce the language to seven words.

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 – Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)
 – Sand and Foam [1926]

Words are the best toys you can give your brain.

Which is more useful to you: a dictionary that tells you how to use a word or a dictionary that tells you how a word is used?

“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.

What I feel for you,
I can't put in words,
language won't hold
my desire.

My favourite word in the English language is »language«. However, if you gave me a slightly larger set of words to choose from I might have more difficulty expressing a preference.

A word after a word after a word is power.

(Margaret Atwood)

Have you ever noticed that the only difference between »word« and »weird« are the vowels?

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

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.)

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