Definition of words

"words" in the noun sense

1. word

a unit of language that native speakers can identify

"I listened to his words very closely"

"words are the blocks from which sentences are made"

"he hardly said ten words all morning"

2. word

a brief statement

"his compositions always started with the lyrics"

"he wrote both words and music"

"the song uses colloquial language"

"he didn't say a word about it"

3. news, intelligence, tidings, word

information about recent and important events

"he has a gift for words"

"she put her thoughts into words"

"they awaited news of the outcome"

4. word

a verbal command for action

"they had a quarrel"

"they had words"

"when I give the word, charge!"

5. discussion, give-and-take, word

an exchange of views on some topic

"the actor forgot his speech"

"we had a good discussion"

"we had a word or two about it"

6. parole, word, word of honor

a promise

"he gave his word"

7. word

a string of bits stored in computer memory

"large computers use words up to 64 bits long"

8. Son, Word, Logos

the divine word of God the second person in the Trinity (incarnate in Jesus)

9. password, watchword, word, parole, countersign

a secret word or phrase known only to a restricted group

"he forgot the password"

10. Bible, Christian Bible, Book, Good Book, Holy Scripture, Holy Writ, Scripture, Word of God, Word

the sacred writings of the Christian religions

"he went to carry the Word to the heathen"

"words" in the verb sense

1. give voice, formulate, word, phrase, articulate

put into words or an expression

"He formulated his concerns to the board of trustees"

Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)

Princeton University "About WordNet®."
WordNet®. Princeton University. 2010.


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Quotations for words

Pardon my words.

Deeds, not words. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]

In so many words.

Words pay no debts. [ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida ]

Let thy words be few. [ Bible ]

What if my words
Were meant for deeds. [ George Eliot ]

Words writ in waters. [ George Chapman ]

Sometimes words
Hurt more than swords. [ Proverb ]

The artillery of words. [ Swift ]

Words are fools' pence. [ Proverb ]

For mad words deaf ears. [ Proverb ]

Good words and no deeds. [ Proverb ]

Fair words please fools. [ Proverb ]

Bare words buy no barley. [ Proverb ]

Some syllables are swords. [ Henry Vaughan ]

Soft words break no bones. [ Proverb ]

Words, however, are things. [ Owen Meredith ]

Words are but empty thanks. [ Colley Gibber ]

Syllables govern the world. [ John Selden ]

Good words fill not a sack. [ Proverb ]

Fine words dress ill deeds. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Enough words, little wisdom. [ Sallust ]

How forcible are right words! [ Bible ]

Youth is too hasty with words. [ Schiller ]

Soft words are hard arguments. [ Proverb ]

Mighty in deeds, not in words. [ German Proverb ]

Fair words fill not the belly. [ Proverb ]

Soft words hurt not the mouth. [ Proverb ]

Proper words in proper places. [ Swift ]

We are taught words, not ideas. [ Beaconsfield ]

Words are the wings of actions. [ Larater ]

Words are women, deeds are men. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

You have an exchequer of words. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona,  Act II Sc. 4 ]

Words are the key of the heart.

Words of love are works of love. [ W. R. Alger ]

Cool words scald not the tongue. [ Proverb ]

Actions speak louder than words. [ Proverb ]

More words than one to a bargain. [ Proverb ]

Words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within. [ Alfred Tennyson ]

Words are the voice of the heart. [ Confucius ]

A gallant man is above ill words. [ Selden ]

Flowers are words
Which even a babe may understand. [ Bishop Coxe ]

Good words cost no more than bad. [ Proverb ]

Fair words never break a bone,
Foul words have broke many a one. [ Proverb ]

A picture is a poem without words. [ Horace ]

Men of few words are the best men. [ William Shakespeare ]

Many words will not fill a bushel. [ Proverb ]

Every one that flatters thee,
Is no friend in misery;
Words are easy, like the wind,
Faithful friends are hard to find. [ Shakespeare ]

Time and words cannot be recalled. [ Proverb ]

Use gentle words, for who can tell
The blessings they impart?
How oft they fall, as manna falls,
On some nigh-fainting heart. [ Ethel L. Beers ]

Words pay no debts, give her deeds. [ William Shakespeare ]

Yet, no - not words, for they
But half can tell love's feeling;
Sweet flowers alone can say
What passion fears revealing:
A once bright rose's wither'd leaf,
A tow'ring lily broken -
Oh, these may paint a grief
No words could ever have spoken. [ Moore ]

The glorious burst of winged words! [ Tupper ]

The heart echoes the words of love. [ Mme. de Krudener ]

Fair words gladden so many a heart. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

The fewer words, the better prayer. [ Luther ]

The words of the wise are as goads. [ Proverb ]

Immodest words admit of no defence. [ Pope ]

Brave men do not boast nor bluster,
Deeds, not words, speak for such. [ Rivarol ]

Obscene words must have a deaf ear. [ Proverb ]

Words are mighty; words are living. [ Adelaide A. Procter ]

Silence is more eloquent than words. [ Carlyle ]

Fair words make me look to my purse. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Graves they say are warmed by glory;
Foolish words and empty story. [ Heine ]

All words are pegs to bang ideas on. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet, The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men! [ Longfellow ]

'Tis a kind of good deed to say well,
And yet words are no deeds. [ William Shakespeare ]

Words are for women, actions for men. [ Proverb ]

Words that weep and tears that speak. [ Abraham Cowley ]

Good words cool more than cold water. [ Proverb ]

There are words which cut like steel. [ Balzac ]

The blushing cheek speaks modest mind.
The lips befitting words most kind,
The eye does tempt to love's desire,
And seems to say 'tis Cupid's fire. [ Harrington ]

A deluge of words and a drop of sense. [ Proverb ]

Under fair words have a care of fraud. [ Portuguese Proverb ]

Kind words are the music of the world. [ F. W. Faber ]

Evening words are not like to morning. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Big words seldom accompany good deeds. [ Danish Proverb ]

Good words are better than bad strokes. [ William Shakespeare ]

Words are but pictures of our thoughts. [ Dryden ]

Deeds are fruits; words are but leaves. [ Proverb ]

Plenty of words when the cause is lost. [ Italian Proverb ]

Silence is better than unmeaning words. [ Pythagoras ]

An Arab, by his earnest gaze,
Has clothed a lovely maid with blushes;
A smile within his eyelids plays
And into words his longing gushes. [ Wm. R. Alger ]

A parsimony of words prodigal of sense. [ Disraeli ]

Tears are sometimes as weighty as words. [ Ovid ]

Words that are now dead were once alive. [ A. Coles ]

Oaths are but words, and words but wind. [ Butler ]

Love is to be won by affectionate words. [ Proverb ]

No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For truth denies all eloquence to woe. [ Byron ]

One doth not know
How much an ill word may empoison liking. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act III. Sc.1 ]

He that hath knowledge spareth his words. [ Bible ]

Sometimes tears have the weight of words. [ Ovid ]

A single little word can strike him dead. [ Luther ]

Thy sum of duty let two words contain
(O! May they graven in thy heart remain!)
Be humble and be just. [ Prior ]

Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!
Were the last words of Marmion. [ Scott ]

So plain is the distinction of our words,
That many have supposed it a spirit
That answers. [ Webster ]

Words and feathers the wind carries away. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Many words and many lies look much alike. [ Proverb ]

They say...
That, putting all his words together,
Tis three blue beans in one blue bladder. [ Prior ]

The rabble also vent their rage in words. [ Goethe ]

Words without thoughts never to heaven go. [ William Shakespeare ]

They enhance their favours by their words. [ Plin ]

Sow truth, if thou the truth wouldst reap;
Who sows the false will reap the vain;
Erect and sound thy conscience keep,
From hollow words and deeds refrain. [ Horatius Bonar ]

Expression is the dress of thought, and
Appears more decent as more suitable;
A vile conceit in pompous words expressed,
Is like a clown in regal purple dressed. [ Pope ]

The full heart knows no rhetoric of words. [ Bovee ]

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been. [ Whittier ]

Fine words! I wonder where yon stole them. [ Swift ]

He's gone, and who knows how he may report
Thy words by adding fuel to the flame? [ Milton ]

Do not discredit your words by your looks. [ Ovid ]

Charm ache with air, and agony with words. [ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act V. Sc.1 ]

Words bring no relief to a saddened heart. [ Friedrich Schiller ]

Good words are worth much and cost little. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

A noble man is led by woman's gentle words. [ Goethe ]

Not the rich viol, trump, cymbal, nor horn.
Guitar, nor cittern, nor the pining flute.
Are half so sweet as tender human words. [ Barry Cornwall ]

The plainest case in many words entangling. [ Baillie ]

But words once spoke can never be recalled. [ Wentworth Dillon ]

These words are razors to my wounded heart. [ William Shakespeare ]

One cannot live by selling goods for words. [ Proverb ]

We know not what we do When we speak words. [ Shelley ]

Bright-eyed fancy, hovering over.
Scatters from her pictured urn.
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. [ Gray ]

A single word often betrays a great design. [ Racine ]

Ill words are bellows to a slackening fire. [ Proverb ]

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles,
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II Sc.7 ]

Words sweetly placed and modestly directed. [ William Shakespeare ]

Words are but holy as the deeds they cover. [ Shelley ]

And torture one poor word ten thousand ways. [ Dryden ]

Words are but wind, but seeing is believing. [ Proverb ]

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garment with his form. [ William Shakespeare ]

Good words cost nothing, but are worth much. [ Proverb ]

Words are the only things that last forever. [ Hazlitt ]

Rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,
Which gives men stomach to digest his words,
With better appetite. [ William Shakespeare ]

But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees,
And leave them honeyless. [ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act V. Sc.1 ]

Then shall our names
Familiar in his mouth as household words.
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered. [ William Shakespeare ]

How short is human life; the very breath,
Which frames my words, accelerates my death. [ Hannah More ]

Familiar in their mouths as household words. [ William Shakespeare, King Henry V ]

One cannot speak the truth with false words. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;
Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

A word spoken in due season, how good is it! [ Bible ]

Alas! I have not words to tell my grief;
To vent my sorrow would be some relief;
Light sufferings give us leisure to complain;
We groan, we cannot speak, in greater pain. [ Dryden ]

To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act III. Sc.1 ]

Your Words are like the notes of dying swans,
Too sweet to last. [ Dryden ]

Zounds! I was never so be thumped with words
Since I first called my brother's father dad. [ William Shakespeare, King John, Act II. Sc.1 ]

Ink was invented to make words living truths. [ W. Caxton ]

Words sweet as honey from his lips distilled. [ Homer ]

Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]

Dumb jewels often, in their silent kind,
More than quick words do move a woman's mind. [ Two Gent. of Ver ]

Words learned by rote, a parrot may rehearse;
But talking is not always to converse. [ William Cowper ]

They shoot but calm words folded up in smoke. [ William Shakespeare, King John, Act II. Sc.1 ]

Words are less needful to sorrow than to joy. [ Helen Jackson ]

Soft words, with nothing in them, make a song. [ Waller ]

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause. [ Victor Hugo ]

Foul words and foul thoughts make a foul soul.

Men who have much to say use the fewest words. [ H. W. Shaw ]

When he spoke, what tender words he used!
So softly, that like flakes of feathered snow.
They melted as they fell. [ Dryden ]

Jewels, five words long,
That, on the stretched forefinger of all Time,
Sparkle forever. [ Tennyson ]

Good words quench more than a bucket of water. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

What art thou? Have not I
An arm as big as thine? A heart as big?
Thy words, I grant, ate bigger, for I wear not
My dagger in my mouth. [ William Shakespeare ]

Good words without deeds are rushes and reeds. [ Proverb ]

Honest men's words are as good as their bonds. [ Proverb ]

What you keep by you, you may change and mend;
But words once spoken can never be recalled. [ Roscommon ]

Didst thou but know the inly touch of love,
Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow
As seek to quench the fire of love with words. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act II. Sc. 7 ]

When words we want, love teacheth to indite;
And what we blush to speak, she bids us write. [ Robert Herrick ]

Of big words and feathers many go to the pound. [ German Proverb ]

Liberty and equality - lovely and sacred words! [ Mazzini ]

Windy attorneys to their client woes,
Airy succeeders of intestate joys,
Poor breathing orators of miseries!
Let them have scope: though what they do impart
Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart. [ William Shakespeare ]

Her words were like a stream of honey fleeting.
That which doth softly trickle from the hive,
Able to melt the hearer's heart unweeting,
And eke to make the dead again alive. [ Spenser ]

For highest looks have not the highest mind,
Nor haughty words most full of highest thought;
But are like bladders blown up with the wind,
That being pricked evanish into nought. [ Spenser ]

Man usually believes, if only words he hears.
That also with them goes material for thinking. [ Goethe ]

Little deeds of kindness, little words of love,
Make our earth an Eden like the heaven above. [ F. S. Osgood ]

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath give. [ William Shakespeare, Macbeth ]

Her words but wind, and all her tears but water. [ Spenser ]

Power above powers!
O heavenly eloquence!
That with the strong rein of commanding words,
Dost manage, guide, and master the eminence
Of men's affections, more than all their swords! [ Daniel ]

Words are like leaves, and when they most abound
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. [ Alexander Pope ]

Do you never think what wondrous beings these?
Do you never think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man ever caught! [ Longfellow ]

Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament:
They are but beggars that can count their worth. [ William Shakespeare ]

Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief. [ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act V. Sc. 2 ]

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would. [ George Eliot ]

Twas he that ranged the words at random flung,
Pierced the fair pearls and them together strung. [ Firdousi ]

Favour with words of good omen (by your tongues). [ Ovid ]

The wise weigh their words in a balance for gold. [ Ecclus ]

And glory long has made the sages smile;
It is something, nothing, words, illusion, wind -
Depending more upon the historian's style
Than on the name a person leaves behind. [ Byron ]

Words are the motes of thought, and nothing more. [ Bailey ]

Words are like sea-shells on the shore; they show
Where the mind ends, and not how far it has been. [ Bailey ]

These gems have life in them: their colors speak,
Say what words fail of. [ George Eliot ]

His eloquence is classic in its style,
Not brilliant with explosive coruscations
Of heterogeneous thoughts, at random caught.
And scattered like a shower of shooting stars,
That end in darkness: no; - his noble mind
Is clear, and full, and stately, and serene.
His earnest and undazzled eye he keeps
Fixed on the sun of Truth, and breathes his words
As easily as eagles cleave the air,
And never pauses till the height is won;
And all who listen follow where he leads. [ Mrs. Hale ]

There is a vast deal of vital air in loving words. [ Landor ]

His words seem'd oracles
That pierced their bosoms; and each man would turn
And gaze in wonder on his neighbour's face,
That with the like dumb wonder answer'd him.
You could have heard
The beating of your pulses while he spoke. [ George Croly ]

Friends are to be estimated from deeds, not words. [ Liv ]

Wranglers never want words though they may matter. [ Proverb ]

A word once vulgarized can never be rehabilitated. [ Lowell ]

Into these ears of mine,
These credulous ears, he poured the sweetest words
That art or love could frame. [ Beaumont ]

Before employing a fine word, find a place for it. [ Joubert ]

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart. [ William Shakespeare ]

Every one is the best interpreter of his own words. [ German Proverb ]

Virtue now is in herbs, and stones, and words only. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Your words bring daylight with them when you speak. [ George Eliot ]

The world is a great poem, and the world's
The words it is writ in, and we souls the thoughts. [ Bailey ]

It is in vain to use words when deeds are expected. [ Proverb ]

Words, however, are things; and the man who accords
To his language the license to outrage his soul
Is controlled by the words he disdains to control. [ Lord Lytton ]

But words are words; I never yet did hear
That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear. [ William Shakespeare, Othello, Act I. Sc. 3 ]

O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words. [ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act V. Sc.1 ]

While words of learned length, and thundering sound,
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head should carry all he knew. [ Goldsmith ]

Style may be defined, proper words in proper places. [ Swift ]

As fire is kindled by bellows, so is anger by words. [ Proverb ]

Words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. [ Byron ]

I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Nor actions, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on. [ William Shakespeare ]

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain. [ Shakespeare ]

And when she spake, Sweete words,
like dropping honey, she did shed;
And 'twixt the perles and rubies softly brake
A silver sound, that heavenly musicke seem'd to make. [ Spenser ]

Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word.
And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird. [ Francis Thompson ]

Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things. [ Samuel Madden ]

Kind words are as a physician to an afflicted spirit. [ Proverb ]

Politeness is to goodness, what words are to thought. [ Joseph Joubert ]

Words shew the wit of a man, but actions his meaning. [ Proverb ]

Fit words are fine, but often fine words are not fit. [ Proverb ]

When you give others ill words, you rail at yourself. [ Proverb ]

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain. [ Epictetus ]

Constant thought will overflow in words unconsciously. [ Byron ]

He utters empty words; he utters sound without meaning. [ Virgil ]

The design of dictionaries is to show the use of words. [ Leibnitz ]

There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on. [ Lowell ]

A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off. [ William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II. Sc. 4 ]

When a few words will rescue misery out of her distress,
I hate the man who can be a churl of them. [ Sterne ]

Where words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. [ William Shakespeare, King Richard II, Act II. Sc.1 ]

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

The fewer the thoughtless words spoken, the less regret.

On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations. [ Wendell Phillips ]

They say, the tongues of dying men
Enforce attention, like deep harmony;
Where words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain;
For they breathe truth, that breathe their words in pain. [ William Shakespeare ]

Without big words, how could many people say small things? [ J. Petit-Senn ]

Wounds may heal, but not those that are made by ill words. [ Proverb ]

The finest language is chiefly made up of unimposing words. [ George Eliot ]

The wise weigh their words in the balance of the goldsmith. [ Ecclus ]

Words are daughters of earth, but ideas are sons of heaven. [ Dr. Samuel Johnson ]

Unfortunate and imprudent are two words for the same thing. [ French Proverb ]

There is as much hold of his words, as of a wet eel's tail. [ Proverb ]

One with more of soul in his face than words on his tongue. [ Wordsworth ]

But do you of your own ingenuity take up more than my words? [ Ovid ]

Nothing is rarer than the use of a word in its exact meaning. [ Whipple ]

Blasphemous words betray the vain foolishness of the speaker. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Apt words have power to 'suage The tumors of a troubled mind;
And are as balm to festered wounds. [ Milton ]

Under the fair words of a bad man there lurks some treachery. [ Phaedr ]

Short words are best and old words when short are best of all. [ Winston Churchill ]

Words, like glass, darken whatever they do not help us to see. [ Joubert ]

Few and precious are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter,
To what shall their rarity be likened?
What price shall count their worth?
Perfect and much to be desired, and giving joy with riches,
No lovely thing on earth can picture all their beauty. [ Tupper ]

Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous. [ Abd el-Kader ]

Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? [ Bible ]

Truth needs not many words; but a false tale, a large preamble. [ Proverb ]

Words are grown so false, I am loath to prove reason with them. [ William Shakespeare ]

What are ye orbs? The words of God? The Scripture of the skies? [ Philip J. Bailey ]

A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds. [ Proverb ]

Words are wise men's counters, but they are the money of fools. [ Hobbes ]

Speaking words of endearment where words of comfort availed not. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Unpack my heart with words. And fall a-cursing, like a very drab. [ William Shakespeare ]

Rich in fit epithets, blest in the lovely marriage of pure words. [ Anthony Brewer ]

Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men. [ Confucius ]

There is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress. [ Emerson ]

Here are a few of the unpleasantest words that ever blotted paper! [ William Shakespeare ]

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style. [ Jonathan Swift ]

An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions. [ Chesterfield ]

They have been at a great feast of language, and stolen the scraps.
They have lived long in the alms-basket of words! [ William Shakespeare ]

How many honest words have buffered corruption since Chaucer's days! [ Thomas Middleton ]

Trembling lips, tuned to such grief that they say bright words sadly. [ Sydney Dobell ]

Opinion, which on crutches walks, And sounds the words another talks. [ Lloyd ]

My words are only words, and moved Upon the topmost froth of thought. [ Tennyson ]

The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it. [ Hazlitt ]

Great writers and orators are commonly economists in the use of words. [ Whipple ]

In times of necessity the words of the wise are worthy to be observed. [ Hitopadesa ]

The art of clothing the thought in apt, significant and sounding words. [ Dryden ]

The boy who uses vulgar words will be shunned by all right-minded boys.

Words are rather the drowsy part of poetry; imagination the life of it. [ Owen Feltham ]

You gain your point if your industrious art can make unusual words easy. [ Roscommon ]

The safest words are always those which bring us most directly to facts. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]

Learn to hold thy tongue. Five words cost Zacharias forty weeks silence. [ Fuller ]

The world is satisfied with words: few care to dive beneath the surface. [ Pascal ]

The words of a friend joined with true affection, give life to the heart. [ Chilo ]

The words you've bandied are sufficient; 'Tis deeds that I prefer to see. [ Goethe ]

The pen is the tongue of the hand; a silent utterer of words for the eye. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

Immodest words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense. [ Earl of Roscommon ]

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and deeds alone suffice. [ Whittier ]

Govern the lips as they were palace doors, the king within;
Tranquil and fair and courteous be all words which from that presence win. [ Sir Edwin Arnold ]

The great secret of a good style is to have proper words in proper places. [ Edwin P. Whipple ]

A few words upon a tombstone, and the truth of those not to be depended on. [ Bovee ]

The superior man wishes to be slow in his words and earnest in his conduct. [ Confucius ]

His words, like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command. [ Milton ]

The shadow of a sound, - a voice without a mouth, and words without a tongue. [ Paul Chatfield ]

A thought embodied and embrained in fit words walks the earth a living being. [ Whipple ]

'Tis a word that's quickly spoken. Which being restrained, a heart is broken. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]

The most subtle flattery that a woman can receive is by actions, not by words. [ Mme. Necker ]

We are pouring our words into a perforated cask (i.e. are throwing them away). [ Plaut ]

Every man must have his own style, as he has his own face and his own features. [ John Stuart Blackie, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

The smallest word has some unguarded spot, and danger lurks in i without a dot. [ O. W. Holmes ]

The young writer should remember that bigness is not greatness, nor fury force. [ George William Curtis ]

Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones. [ Bible ]

Words are good, but are not the best. The best is not to be understood by words. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

It is not words that give strength to friendship, but a similarity of interests. [ Demosthenes ]

Madam, you have bereft me of all words. Only my blood speaks to you in my veins. [ William Shakespeare ]

Friends must be preserved with good deeds, and enemies reclaimed with fair words. [ Severus ]

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. [ William Shakespeare ]

In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker. [ Plutarch ]

Actions, looks, words, steps from the alphabet by which you may spell characters. [ Lavater ]

Elocution is the adjustment of apt words and sentiments to the subject in debate. [ Cicero ]

Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company. [ Coleridge ]

And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one. [ Montaigne ]

Actions, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell Character. [ J. C. Lavater ]

I was never so bethumped with words since first I called my brother's father dad. [ William Shakespeare ]

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold, alike fantastic if too new or old. [ Pope ]

The world is content with words; few think of searching into the nature of things. [ Pascal ]

His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than words, was simply doing good. [ Whittier ]

Rhetoric adorns and enlarges a thing with words, but is of no value without logic. [ Luther ]

No man has a prosperity so high and firm but two or three words can dishearten it. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone than by unexpected words. [ George Eliot ]

Words become luminous when the finger of the poet touches them with his phosphorus. [ Joubert ]

Words do sometimes fly from the tongue that the heart did neither hatch nor harbour. [ Feltham ]

Words are good, but they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Glory long has made the sages smile; 'tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind. [ Byron ]

When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]

It is with words as with sunbeams, the more they are condensed the deeper they burn. [ Southey ]

Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words. [ H. W. Shaw ]

Words are like leaves; some wither every year, and every year a younger race succeed. [ Roscommon ]

Don't contend with words against wordy people; speech is given to all, wisdom to few. [ Cato ]

Say what you have to say in the simplest sincerity, in the fewest and shortest words. [ Gerald Massey, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

Call him wise whose actions, words, and steps are all a clear because to a clear why. [ Lavater ]

Your tongues and your words are steeped in honey, but your hearts in gall and vinegar. [ Plaut ]

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose. [ Voltaire ]

Words become luminous when the poet's finger has passed over them its phosphorescence. [ Joubert ]

Sweet tears! the awful language eloquent of infinite affection, far too big for words. [ Pollok ]

Heaps of huge words uphoarded hideously, with horrid sound, though having little sense. [ Spenser ]

Words of affection, howsoever expressed, , The latest spoken still are deemed the best. [ Joanna Baillie ]

The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit. [ Fenelon ]

Those are poets who write thoughts as fragrant as flowers, and in as many colored words. [ Mme. de Krudener ]

In no time or epoch can the Highest be spoken of in words - not in many words, I think, ever. [ Carlyle ]

There is no point where art so nearly touches nature as when it appears in the form of words. [ J. G. Holland ]

Style seems to depend on three things:
1. a mental attitude and character,
2. a familiarity with the best authors,
3. dexterity in the use of words, acquired by constant practice.
So we must learn to speak by speaking, as we learn to walk by walking, or to dance by dancing. [ John Stuart Blackie, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

Words are as they are taken, and things are as they are used. There are even cursed blessings. [ Bishop Hall ]

Lovers have in their language an infinite number of words, in which each syllable is a caress. [ Rochepedre ]

For words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools. [ Thomas Hobbes ]

To write well is to think well; there is no art of style distinct from the culture of the mind. [ Ernest Renan, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

Thought in the mind may come forth gold or dross; when coined in words, we know its real worth. [ Young ]

There is nothing in words and styles but suitableness that makes them acceptable and effective. [ Glanvill ]

Words really flattering are not those which we prepare, but those which escape us unthinkingly. [ Ninon de Lenclos ]

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is,
prose = words in their best order;
poetry = the best words in the best order. [ Coleridge ]

You will find that silence, or very gentle words, are the most exquisite revenge for reproaches. [ Judge Hale ]

The words of a man's mouth are as deep waters, and the well-spring of wisdom as a flowing brook. [ Bible ]

Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment. [ L'Estrange ]

The words of a tale-bearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly. [ Bible ]

To know the true opinions of men, one ought to pay more respect to their actions than their words. [ Descartes ]

Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, lie in three words - health, peace, and competence. [ Pope ]

There are words which are worth as much as the best actions, for they contain the germ of them all. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break. [ William Shakespeare ]

The words ending in ique do mock the physician, as hectique, paralitique, apoplectique, lethargique. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

He that condemns a shrew to the degree of not descending to words with her does worse than beat her. [ L'Estrange ]

It is as easy to draw back a stone thrown with force from the hand, as to recall a word once spoken. [ Menander ]

True courage scorns to vent her prowess in a storm of words; and to the valiant, action alone speaks. [ Tobias Smollett ]

Commonsense has given to words their ordinary signification, and commonsense is the genius of mankind. [ Guizot ]

We should be as careful of our words as of our actions, and as far from speaking ill as from doing ill. [ Cicero ]

An army or a parliament is a collection of men, a dictionary, or nomenclature, is a collection of words. [ I. Watts ]

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity. [ Emerson ]

The words of men are like the leaves of trees; when they are too many they hinder the growth of the fruit. [ Steiger ]

Copiousness of words is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on some sort of understandings. [ Montagu ]

The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed. [ Joubert ]

A blemish may be removed from a diamond by careful polishing, but evil words once spoken cannot be effaced. [ Confucius ]

It is with a word as with an arrow: the arrow once loosed does not return to the bow; nor a word to the lips. [ Abdel-Kader ]

It is not a great Xerxes army of words, but a compact Greek ten thousand that march safely down to posterity. [ Lowell ]

All things in the natural world symbolize God, yet none of them speak of Him but in broken and imperfect words. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]

The way to wealth is as plain as the road to market. It depends chiefly on two words, - industry and frugality. [ Franklin ]

Men believe that their reason governs their words; but it often happens the words have power to react on reason. [ Bacon ]

Actions are the first tragedies in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]

The history of literature abounds with examples of words used almost without meaning by whole classes of writers. [ William Mathews ]

Speak no harsh words of earth; she is our mother, and few of us her sons who have not added a wrinkle to her brow. [ Alexander Smith ]

In the mouths of many men soft words are like roses that soldiers put into the muzzles of their muskets on holidays. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]

Never write except when you have something to say, and then say it simply - as Addison, Goldsmith, and Franklin wrote. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

I have tried merely to express what I had to say with as much simplicity and as little affectation as I could command. [ James A. Froude, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

I have always tried to write Saxon rather than Latin, in short words rather than long, and specially in short sentences. [ Edward Everett Hale, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so it is of small wits to talk much and say nothing. [ Rochefoucauld ]

There is as much eloquence in the tone of the voice, in the eyes, and in the air of a speaker as in his choice of words. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Words of cheer thrill not only the soul of the hearer, but equally the soul of the speaker, because they are God's words. [ Unknown ]

The turn of a sentence has decided the fate of many a friendship, and, for aught that we know, the fate of many a kingdom. [ Jeremy Bentham ]

You have to go below the surface of words and actually feel them. This helps you choose the just-right word for your copy. [ Kathy Kleidermacher, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Copywriter's Words And Phrases ]

If you would be pungent, be brief, for it is with words as with sunbeams the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. [ Saxe ]

Any style is good if you have something you have a call to say, and men ought to hear; and no style is good if you haven't. [ Thomas Hughes, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

There are attractions in modest diffidence above the force of words. A silent address is the genuine eloquence of sincerity. [ Goldsmith ]

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of Heaven. [ Johnson ]

But yesterday the word of Caesar might Have stood against the world; now lies he there. And none so poor to do him reverence. [ William Shakespeare ]

Gentle words, quiet words, are after all, the most powerful words. They are more convincing, more compelling, more prevailing. [ Washington Gladden ]

Like a beautiful flower full of color, but without scent, are the fine but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly. [ Buddha ]

Good poetry has a lot in common with good copy. A poem evokes vivid images and strong emotions through very careful word choice. [ Kathy Kleidermacher, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Copywriter's Words And Phrases ]

How long a time lies in one little word! Four lagging winters and four wanton springs End in a word: such is the breath of kings. [ William Shakespeare ]

It is an invariable maxim that words which add nothing to the sense or to the clearness must diminish the force of the expression. [ Campbell ]

Goodman Fact is allowed by everybody to be a plain-spoken person, and a man of very few words; tropes and figures are his aversion. [ Addison ]

The propriety of thoughts and words, which are the hidden beauties of a play, are but confusedly judged in the vehemence of action. [ Dryden ]

As it is the mark of great minds to say many things in a few words, so it is that of little minds to use many words to say, nothing. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances. [ Bovee ]

Words are good, But they are not the best. The best is not to be explained by words; the spirit in which we act is the great matter. [ Goethe ]

The lively phraseology of Montesquieu was the result of long meditation. His words, as light as wings, bear on them grave reflections. [ Joubert ]

Multitudes of words are neither an argument of clear ideas in the writer, nor a proper means of conveying clear notions to the reader. [ Adam Clarke ]

Sorrowful words become the sorrowful; angry words suit the passionate; light words a playful expression; serious words suit the grave. [ Horace ]

The good writer never chooses a word at hazard, or without noting its harmony in sound as well as sense with what precedes and follows. [ Sir Edwin Arnold, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

It has long seemed to me that it would be more honorable to our ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deeds to imitate them more. [ Horace Mann ]

Poetry is music in words, and music is poetry in sound: both excellent sauce, but they have lived and died poor, that made them their meat. [ Fuller ]

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old. [ George Eliot ]

Wherever you find a sentence musically worded, of true rhythm and melody in the words, there is something deep and good in the meaning also. [ Coleridge ]

For one word a man is often deemed to be wise, and for one word he is often deemed to be foolish. We ought to be careful indeed what we say. [ Confucius ]

High air-castles are cunningly built of words, the words well-bedded in good logic mortar; wherein, however, no knowledge will come to lodge. [ Carlyle ]

Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent. [ Colton ]

Style in painting is the same as in writing, - a power over materials, whether words or colors, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed. [ Sir Joshua Reynolds ]

The power of words is immense. A well-chosen word has often sufficed to stop a flying army, to change defeat into victory, and to save an empire. [ E. de Girardin ]

Oppose kindness to perverseness. The heavy sword will not cut soft silk; by using sweet words and gentleness you may lead an elephant with a hair. [ Saadi ]

O! many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant! And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken! [ Scott ]

Words may be counterfeit, false coined, and current only from the tongue, without the mind; but passion is in the soul, and always speaks the heart. [ Southern ]

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else. [ Carlyle ]

The misuse of words in this literature of ungoverned or ungovernable sensibility has become so general as to threaten the validity of all definitions. [ E. P. Whipple ]

Rightly, poetry is organic. We cannot know things by words and writing, but only by taking a central position in the universe and living in its forms. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Kind words are benedictions. They are not only instruments of power, but of benevolence and courtesy; blessings both to the speaker and hearer of them. [ Frederick Saunders ]

When the dust of death has choked a great man's voice, the common words he said turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked like horses draw like griffins. [ Mrs. Browning ]

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter - 'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning. [ Mark Twain ]

Words are often things also, and very precious, especially on the gravest occasions. Without "words," and the truth of things that are in them what were we? [ Leigh Hunt ]

He used words as mere steppingstones, upon which, with a free and youthful bound, his spirit crosses and recrosses the bright and rushing stream of thought. [ Longfellow ]

Power above powers! O heavenly eloquence! that, with the strong reign of commanding words, dost manage, guide and master the high eminence of men's affections! [ Daniel ]

Look in the face of the person to whom you are speaking, if you wish to know his real sentiments; for he can command his words more easily than his countenance. [ Chesterfield ]

He is a wise man who knoweth that his words should be suited to the occasion, his love to the worthiness of the object, and his anger according to his strength. [ Hitopadesa ]

The past but lives in words; a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale, unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Wisdom and understanding are synonymous words; they consist of two propositions, which are not distinct in sense, but one and the same thing variously expressed. [ Tillotson ]

Great, ever fruitful; profitable for reproof, for encouragement, for building up in manful purposes and works, are the words of those that in their day were men. [ Carlyle ]

The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in few words. [ Johnson ]

Love is sparingly soluble in the words of men, therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

If ideas and words were distinctly weighed and duly considered, they would afford us another sort of logic and critic, than what we have been hitherto acquainted with. [ J. Locke ]

Though looks and words, by the strong mastery of his practiced will, are overruled, the mounting blood betrays an impulse in its secret spring too deep for his control. [ Southey ]

The seven wise men of Greece, so famous for their wisdom all the world over, acquired all that fame, each of them, by a single sentence consisting of two or three words. [ South ]

A beginner should study the raciest, strongest, best spoken speech, and let the printed speech alone. Write straight from the thought, without bothering about the manner. [ William D. Howells, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

With vivid words your just conceptions grace. Much truth compressing in a narrow space; Then many shall peruse, but few complain, And envy frown, and critics snarl in vain. [ Pindar ]

A good deal depends upon luck as well as care, and sometimes a writer must wait, or even leave off and return to work again, before he can hit upon the turn of words required. [ Richard D. Blackmore, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

As you see in a pair of bellows, there is a forced breath without life, so in those that are puffed up with the wind of ostentation, there may be charitable words without works. [ Bishop Hall ]

Words are but poor interpreters in the realms of emotion. When all words end, music begins; when they suggest, it realises; and hence the secret of its strange, ineffable power. [ H. R. Haweis ]

The last word is the most dangerous of infernal machines; and husband and wife should no more fight to get it than they would struggle for the possession of a lighted bombshell. [ Douglas Jerrold ]

Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers. [ Bovee ]

When you doubt between words, use the plainest, the commonest, the most idiomatic. Eschew fine words as you would rouge, love simple ones as you would native roses on your cheek. [ J. C. Hare ]

I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth. I hate to see a load of bandboxes go along the street, and I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them. [ Hazlitt ]

The great silent man! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, - words with little meaning, actions with little worth, - one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence. [ Carlyle ]

Every man may be, and at some time is, lifted to a platform whence he looks beyond sense to moral and spiritual truth, and in that mood he strings words like beads upon his thought. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

I have strictly adhered to the rule of never copying. I write at once as I intend the words to stand. This leads to great precision of thought, and makes the style fresh and vigorous. [ Louisa Molesworth, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

The last word should be the last word. It is like a finishing touch given to color; there is nothing more to add. But what precaution is needed in order not to put the last word first [ Joubert ]

In oratory, affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn. [ Lord Herbert ]

Have something to tell, and tell it clearly, simply, without a trace of affectation or conscious effort at fine writing. I should advise the study of examples in this perfection of art. [ E P. Roe, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

If you're ever stuck in some thick undergrowth, in your underwear, don't stop and think of what other words have 'under' in them, because that's probably the first sign of jungle madness. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Ought or Should? Both of these words, though implying obligation, have different shades of meaning. Ought is the stronger term. Thus a man ought to be honest; he should be neat in his dress. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Words are freeborn, and not the vassals of the gruff tyrants of prose to do their bidding only. They have the same right to dance and sing as the dewdrops have to sparkle and the stars to shine. [ Abraham Coles ]

The temple of art is built of words. Painting and sculpture and music are but the blazon of its windows, borrowing all their significance from the light, and suggestive only of the temple's use. [ J. G. Holland ]

It would be well for us all, old and young, to remember that our words and actions, ay, and our thoughts also, are set upon never-stopping wheels, rolling on and on unto the pathway of eternity. [ M. M. Brewster ]

Lover, daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother: in those six words lies what the human heart contains of the sweetest, the most ecstatic, the most sacred, the purest, and the most ineffable. [ Massias ]

A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy: the smile that accepts the lover before the words are uttered, and the smile that lights on the first-born baby, and assures it of a mother's love. [ Haliburton ]

Who is there that in logical words can express the affect that music has upon us? A kind of unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that. [ T. Carlyle ]

The main thing in writing is to have distinct, and clear, and well-marshalled ideas, and then to express them simply and without affectation. This forms what we may call the bones of a good style. [ John Stuart Blackie, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

What people will say - in these words there lies the tyranny of the world, the whole destruction of our natural disposition, the oblique vision of our minds. These four words bear sway everywhere. [ Auerbach ]

Out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books, and the like, we do save and recover somewhat from the deluge of time. [ Bacon ]

Liquid, flowing words are the choicest and the best, if language is regarded as music. But when it is considered as a picture, then there are rough words which are very telling, - they make their mark. [ Joubert ]

It is from Cadmus, the inventor of the alphabet, this ingenious art comes to us of painting words, speaking to the eyes, and by the different form of traced figures, giving color and body to the thoughts. [ De Brebeuf ]

Good words do more than hard speeches; as the sunbeams, without any noise, will make the traveller cast off his cloak, which all the blustering winds could not do, but only make him bind it closer to him. [ Leighton ]

The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles, as Southey's, you read page after page without noticing the medium. [ Coleridge ]

Close thine ear against him that shall open his mouth secretly against another; if thou receive not his words, they fly back and wound the reporter; if thou receive them, they flee forward and wound the receiver. [ Quarles ]

The examples of maternal influences are countless; Solomon himself records the words of wisdom that fell from a mother's lips, and Timothy was taught the Scriptures from a child by his grandmother and his mother. [ A. Ritchie ]

A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words. Character is like bells which ring out sweet music, and which, when touched accidentally even, resound with sweet music. [ Phillips Brooks ]

Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smoke-stained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs, and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words. [ Whittier ]

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: Mankind. Basically, it's made up of two separate words - mank and ind. What do these words mean ? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]

Night steals on; and the day takes its farewell, like the words of a departing friend, or the last tone of hallowed music in a minster's aisles, heard when it floats along the shade of elms, in the still place of graves. [ Percival ]

The name of a mother! what a long history does it bring with it of smiles and words of mildness, of tears shed by night and of sighings at the morning dawn, of love unrequited, of cares for which there can be no recompense on earth. [ Prof. Park ]

As ships meet at sea a moment together, when words of greeting must be spoken, and then away upon the deep, so men meet in this world; and I think we should cross no man's path without hailing him, and if he needs giving him supplies. [ Beecher ]

Do not fancy, as too many do, that thou canst praise God by singing hymns to Him in church once a week, and disobeying Him all the week long. He asks of thee works as well as words; and more. He asks of thee works first and words after. [ Charles Kingsley ]

Negligence or Neglect? Negligence is a habit; neglect is an act. The following sentences illustrate the difference in the meaning of these words:
His negligence was the source of all his misfortunes,
By his neglect he lost the opportunity. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

You should not only have attention to everything, but a quickness of attention, so as to observe at once all the people in the room - their motions, their looks and their words - and yet without staring at them and seeming to be an observer. [ Chesterfield ]

Welfare requires one or two companions of intelligence, probity, and grace, to wear out life with, - persons with whom we can speak a few reasonable words every day, by whom we can measure ourselves, and who shall hold us fast to good sense and virtue. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes. [ Hazlitt ]

Words, those fickle daughters of the earth, are the creation of a being that is finite, and when applied to explain that which is infinite, they fail; for that which is made surpasses not the maker; nor can that which is immeasurable by our thoughts be measured by our tongues. [ Colton ]

Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning. [ Burritt ]

True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. [ Webster ]

None but those who have loved can be supposed to understand the oratory of the eye, the mute eloquence of a look, or the conversational powers of the face. Love's sweetest meanings are unspoken; the full heart knows no rhetoric of words, and resorts to the pantomime of sighs and glances. [ Bovee ]

Portion or Part? The distinction between these words is usually unheeded. A portion is a part assigned, allotted, or set aside for a special purpose; part has a less limited meaning. Hence, we may say correctly:
In what part of the city do you live?
What portion of the estate do you inherit?. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Observation or Observance? The act of noting is called observation; that of keeping or celebrating is called observance. The difference in the meaning of these words is clearly illustrated by such phrases as, the acute observation of the detective; and the religious observance of the Sabbath. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Observe or Say? While the dictionaries authorize the common use of these words, it is in better taste to restrict the employment of observe to its primitive signification; namely, to notice. Hence such an expression as, What did you observe? is objectionable, and should be, What did you say? [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

There are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world. [ John Ruskin ]

Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great empire of silence. The noble silent men, scattered here and there each in his department, silently thinking, silently working; whom no morning newspaper makes mention of. [ Carlyle ]

Remember always in painting, as in eloquence, the greater your strength the quieter will be your manner and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life, the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim. [ Ruskin ]

His eloquent tongue so well seconds his fertile invention that no one speaks better when suddenly called forth. His attention never languishes; his mind is always before his words; his memory has all its stock so turned into ready money that, without hesitation or delay, it supplies whatever the occasion may require. [ Erasmus ]

It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent or the cause of any event; but they signify merely men's ignorance of the real and immediate cause. [ Adam Clarke ]

A few words worthy to be remembered suffice to give an idea of a great mind. There are single thoughts that contain the essence of a whole volume, single sentences that have the beauties of a large work, a simplicity so finished and so perfect that it equals in merit and in excellence a large and glorious composition. [ Joubert ]

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence; and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal, is more than to speak in good words or in good order. A good continued speech, without a good speech of interlocution, shows slowness; and a good reply, or second speech, without a good settled speech, showeth shallowness and weakness. [ Bacon ]

Whatever strengthens our local attachments is favorable both to individual and national character, our home, our birthplace, our native land. Think for a while what the virtues are which arise out of the feelings connected with these words, and if you have any intellectual eyes, you will then perceive the connection between topography and patriotism. [ Southey ]

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else. [ Ruskin ]

Maggie and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion, - when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the most trivial words, the lightest gestures, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent. [ George Eliot ]

Occur or Transpire? The misuse of these words is very common. Occur means simply to take place, to happen; transpire to leak out, to come to light. Hence, it is incorrect to say, The annual school exhibition transpired last week. The proper word here is occurred. But transpire is correctly used in such a sentence as, The proceedings of the caucus have not yet transpired. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Poetry interprets in two ways: it interprets by expressing, with magical felicity, the physiognomy and movements of the outward world; and it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and laws of the inward world of man's moral and spiritual nature. In other words, poetry is interpretative both by having natural magic in it, and by having moral profundity. [ Matthew Arnold ]

A clear running brook is the best teacher of style. There is a quick forward movement - but not measured or monotonous movement - while the water is so limpid that everything is seen through the crystal medium. It seems to me that the best style is that which reveals the writer's thoughts so easily, plainly, and musically that the reader becomes engrossed in the thought or story and forgets the writer. [ E P. Roe, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

You must study to give colour by apt images, and warmth by natural passion and earnestness. The music of words and the cadence of sentences is a matter which depends on the ear. Above all things monotony in the form of the sentences is to be avoided; variety means wealth and always pleases. Condensation also ought to be particularly studied, and a loose, rambling, ill-compacted form of sentence avoided. [ John Stuart Blackie, The Art Of Authorship, 1891 ]

O God, whom the world misjudges, and whom everything declares! listen to the last words that my lips pronounce! If I have wandered, it was in seeking Thy law. My heart may go astray, but it is full of Thee! I see, without alarm, eternity appear; and I can not think that a God who has given me life, that a God who has poured so many blessings on my days, will, now that my days are done, torment me for ever! [ The last prayer of Voltaire ]

A composition which dazzles at first sight by gaudy epithets, or brilliant turns of expression, or glittering trains of imagery, may fade gradually from the mind, leaving no enduring impression. Words which flow fresh and warm from a full heart, and which are instinct with the life and breath of human feeling, pass into household memories, and partake of the immortality of the affections from which they spring. [ Whipple ]

He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously; who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them. [ Washington Irving ]

Posture or Attitude? Each of these words has its appropriate place, and one should not be misapplied for the other. Posture is the mode of placing the body, and may be either natural or assumed. Attitude is always assumed, and is intended to display some grace of the body, or some affection or purpose of the mind. Postures, when natural, accommodate themselves to the convenience of the body; when assumed they may be either serious or ridiculous. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. [ Emerson ]

Over Under. These words have various meanings besides the designation of mere locality, and are often misapplied. The terms under oath, under hand and seal, under arms, under his own signature, etc., are fully established and authorized forms of expression, which do not concern the relative positions of the persons and things indicated, but are idiomatic. Hence, over his own signature, is an unjustifiable phrase, despite the fact that the signature is really at the bottom of the instrument signed. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

If we wish to know the political and moral condition of a state, we must ask what rank women hold in it; their influence embraces the whole of life; a wife! - a mother! - two magical words, comprising the sweetest source of man's felicity; theirs is a reign of beauty, of love, of reason, - always a reign! a man takes counsel with his wife, he obeys his mother; he obeys her long after she has ceased to live; and the ideas which he has received from her become principles stronger even than his passions. [ Aime Martin ]

See a fond mother encircled by her children; with pious tenderness she looks around, and her soul even melts with maternal love. One she kisses on its cheeks, and clasps another to her bosom; one she sets upon her knee, and finds a seat upon her foot for another. And while, by their actions, by their lisping words, and asking eyes, she understands their numberless little wishes, to these she dispenses a look, and a word to those; and whether she grants or refuses, whether she smiles or frowns, it is all in tender love. [ Krummacher ]

If a man were only to deal in the world for a day, and should never have occasion to converse more with mankind, never more need their good opinion or good word, it were then no great matter (speaking as to the concernments of this world), if a man spent his reputation all at once, and ventured it at one throw; but if he be to continue in the world, and would have the advantage of conversation while he is in it, let him make use of truth and sincerity in all his words and actions; for nothing but this will last and hold out to the end. [ Tillotson ]

My method has been simply this - to think well on the subject which I had to deal with and when thoroughly impressed with it and acquainted with it in all its details, to write away without stopping to choose a word, leaving a blank where I was at a loss for it; to express myself as simply as possible in vernacular English, and afterwards to go through what I had written, striking out all redundancies, and substituting, when possible, simpler and more English words for those I might have written. I found that by following this method I could generally reduce very considerably in length what I had put on paper without sacrificing anything of importance or rendering myself less intelligible. [ Sir Austen Henry Layard, The Art of Authorship, 1891 ]

words in Scrabble®

The word words is playable in Scrabble®, no blanks required.

Scrabble® Letter Score: 9

Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays In The Letters words:

WORDS
(39)
SWORD
(39)
 

All Scrabble® Plays For The Word words

WORDS
(39)
WORDS
(34)
WORDS
(33)
WORDS
(30)
WORDS
(30)
WORDS
(27)
WORDS
(27)
WORDS
(27)
WORDS
(26)
WORDS
(26)
WORDS
(22)
WORDS
(20)
WORDS
(20)
WORDS
(19)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(14)
WORDS
(14)
WORDS
(13)
WORDS
(12)
WORDS
(11)
WORDS
(11)
WORDS
(11)
WORDS
(11)
WORDS
(10)
WORDS
(10)
WORDS
(9)

The 200 Highest Scoring Scrabble® Plays For Words Using The Letters In words

WORDS
(39)
SWORD
(39)
WORD
(36)
WORDS
(34)
WORDS
(33)
SWORD
(33)
WORDS
(30)
WORDS
(30)
SWORD
(30)
WORD
(30)
SWORD
(30)
WORDS
(27)
SWORD
(27)
WORDS
(27)
WORDS
(27)
SWORD
(27)
SWORD
(27)
SWORD
(26)
WORDS
(26)
WORDS
(26)
WORD
(24)
WORD
(24)
WORD
(24)
WORD
(24)
ROWS
(24)
WORD
(24)
ROWS
(24)
SWORD
(22)
SWORD
(22)
WORDS
(22)
SWORD
(22)
DORS
(21)
ROWS
(21)
ROWS
(21)
ROWS
(21)
ROWS
(21)
SWORD
(20)
WORD
(20)
SWORD
(20)
WORDS
(20)
WORDS
(20)
WORDS
(19)
SOW
(18)
SOW
(18)
SOW
(18)
SWORD
(18)
SWORD
(18)
ROW
(18)
SWORD
(18)
ROW
(18)
OWS
(18)
OWS
(18)
ROW
(18)
SWORD
(18)
RODS
(18)
RODS
(18)
SWORD
(18)
OWS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
DORS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
SWORD
(17)
ROWS
(16)
WORD
(16)
WORD
(16)
WORD
(16)
ROWS
(16)
WORD
(16)
WORD
(16)
OW
(15)
SWORD
(15)
RODS
(15)
RODS
(15)
RODS
(15)
OW
(15)
DORS
(15)
DORS
(15)
RODS
(15)
ROWS
(15)
DORS
(15)
DORS
(15)
WORDS
(14)
ROW
(14)
DORS
(14)
ROWS
(14)
WORDS
(14)
SOW
(14)
SWORD
(14)
ROWS
(14)
ROWS
(14)
OWS
(14)
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(14)
SWORD
(13)
WORDS
(13)
WORD
(13)
OW
(13)
DOS
(12)
ROW
(12)
WORD
(12)
OWS
(12)
ROWS
(12)
SWORD
(12)
RODS
(12)
SWORD
(12)
RODS
(12)
WORD
(12)
DORS
(12)
ROW
(12)
ROW
(12)
DOS
(12)
WORDS
(12)
ROD
(12)
ROD
(12)
SOW
(12)
SOW
(12)
OWS
(12)
DOS
(12)
SOD
(12)
ROD
(12)
SOD
(12)
OWS
(12)
SOD
(12)
SOW
(12)
SWORD
(11)
WORDS
(11)
ROWS
(11)
WORDS
(11)
ROW
(11)
WORD
(11)
SWORD
(11)
WORDS
(11)
WORDS
(11)
SOW
(11)
SWORD
(11)
SWORD
(10)
WORD
(10)
WORD
(10)
WORD
(10)
SWORD
(10)
DORS
(10)
DORS
(10)
DORS
(10)
SOW
(10)
RODS
(10)
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(10)
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(10)
OWS
(10)
RODS
(10)
WORDS
(10)
RODS
(10)
OW
(10)
OW
(10)
WORDS
(10)
ROW
(10)
WORD
(9)
DO
(9)
SWORD
(9)
WORDS
(9)
ORS
(9)
RODS
(9)
ORS
(9)
ROWS
(9)
OW
(9)
ROWS
(9)
ORS
(9)
ROWS
(9)
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(9)
WORD
(9)
DO
(9)
DORS
(9)
SOD
(8)
SOD
(8)
SOD
(8)
ROD
(8)
DOS
(8)
ROD
(8)
OWS
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ROD
(8)
SOD
(8)
SOW
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DORS
(8)
DOS
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SOW
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OWS
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RODS
(8)
WORD
(8)
ROWS
(8)
ROW
(8)
OWS
(8)
DOS
(8)
SOW
(7)
SOW
(7)

words in Words With Friends™

The word words is playable in Words With Friends™, no blanks required.

Words With Friends™ Letter Score: 9

Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays In The Letters words:

WORDS
(51)
SWORD
(51)
 

All Words With Friends™ Plays For The Word words

WORDS
(51)
WORDS
(39)
WORDS
(36)
WORDS
(34)
WORDS
(33)
WORDS
(33)
WORDS
(27)
WORDS
(27)
WORDS
(27)
WORDS
(26)
WORDS
(22)
WORDS
(22)
WORDS
(20)
WORDS
(20)
WORDS
(19)
WORDS
(19)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(15)
WORDS
(15)
WORDS
(15)
WORDS
(14)
WORDS
(14)
WORDS
(13)
WORDS
(13)
WORDS
(13)
WORDS
(12)
WORDS
(11)
WORDS
(11)
WORDS
(11)
WORDS
(11)
WORDS
(11)
WORDS
(10)
WORDS
(10)
WORDS
(10)
WORDS
(9)

The 200 Highest Scoring Words With Friends™ Plays Using The Letters In words

WORDS
(51)
SWORD
(51)
WORD
(48)
WORDS
(39)
SWORD
(39)
WORDS
(36)
SWORD
(36)
WORD
(36)
WORDS
(34)
SWORD
(33)
SWORD
(33)
WORDS
(33)
WORDS
(33)
DORS
(27)
SWORD
(27)
WORDS
(27)
SWORD
(27)
WORDS
(27)
WORDS
(27)
ROWS
(27)
ROWS
(27)
SWORD
(27)
SWORD
(26)
WORDS
(26)
SWORD
(26)
WORD
(24)
WORD
(24)
WORD
(24)
WORD
(24)
WORD
(24)
SWORD
(22)
SWORD
(22)
WORDS
(22)
WORDS
(22)
RODS
(21)
ROWS
(21)
ROWS
(21)
ROWS
(21)
RODS
(21)
ROWS
(21)
DORS
(21)
WORDS
(20)
SWORD
(20)
SWORD
(20)
WORDS
(20)
WORD
(20)
SWORD
(19)
WORDS
(19)
WORDS
(19)
WORDS
(18)
ROW
(18)
SOW
(18)
SOW
(18)
SOW
(18)
SWORD
(18)
SWORD
(18)
SWORD
(18)
OWS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
SWORD
(18)
WORDS
(18)
OWS
(18)
ROW
(18)
ROW
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORD
(18)
OWS
(18)
SWORD
(18)
WORDS
(18)
WORDS
(18)
ROWS
(17)
SWORD
(17)
WORD
(16)
WORD
(16)
ROWS
(16)
WORD
(16)
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(16)
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(16)
OW
(15)
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(15)
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(15)
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(15)
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(15)
ROWS
(15)
DORS
(15)
WORDS
(15)
DORS
(15)
DORS
(15)
SWORD
(15)
WORDS
(15)
SWORD
(15)
SWORD
(15)
RODS
(15)
WORDS
(15)
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(15)
ROWS
(14)
ROWS
(14)
SWORD
(14)
SOW
(14)
DORS
(14)
SWORD
(14)
ROWS
(14)
ROW
(14)
WORD
(14)
WORD
(14)
ROWS
(14)
WORDS
(14)
WORDS
(14)
OWS
(14)
SWORD
(13)
SWORD
(13)
OW
(13)
WORDS
(13)
SWORD
(13)
WORDS
(13)
WORDS
(13)
WORD
(13)
RODS
(12)
SWORD
(12)
ROW
(12)
DOS
(12)
ROW
(12)
DOS
(12)
SOW
(12)
OWS
(12)
ROW
(12)
RODS
(12)
ROWS
(12)
SWORD
(12)
DORS
(12)
SOD
(12)
SOW
(12)
SOD
(12)
OWS
(12)
SOD
(12)
SOW
(12)
ROD
(12)
OWS
(12)
ROD
(12)
WORDS
(12)
ROD
(12)
WORD
(12)
DOS
(12)
WORD
(12)
ROWS
(11)
ROWS
(11)
DORS
(11)
WORD
(11)
WORDS
(11)
SOW
(11)
ROW
(11)
SWORD
(11)
SWORD
(11)
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(11)
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(11)
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(11)
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(11)
OW
(10)
DORS
(10)
DORS
(10)
ROD
(10)
WORDS
(10)
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(10)
WORDS
(10)
WORDS
(10)
SOD
(10)
SWORD
(10)
WORD
(10)
DORS
(10)
RODS
(10)
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(10)
OWS
(10)
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(10)
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(10)
WORD
(10)
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(10)
SWORD
(10)
WORD
(10)
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(10)
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(10)
OWS
(10)
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(10)
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(10)
SWORD
(9)
WORDS
(9)
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(9)
DORS
(9)
DO
(9)
ORS
(9)
ROWS
(9)
ROWS
(9)
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DO
(9)

Words within the letters of words

2 letter words in words (5 words)

3 letter words in words (7 words)

4 letter words in words (4 words)

5 letter words in words (Anagrams) (2 words)

Word Growth involving words

Shorter words in words

or word

Longer words containing words

afterwords

buzzwords

bywords

catchwords

codewords

headwords

keywords

loanwords

multiwords

nonwords

quadwords

rewords forewords

swearwords

swords backswords backswordsman

swords backswords backswordsmen

swords broadswords

swords crosswords

swords cusswords

swords miswords

swords passwords

swords silverswords

swords swordshaped

swords swordsman backswordsman

swords swordsman swordsmanship swordsmanships

swords swordsmen backswordsmen

swords swordsmith swordsmiths

swords swordstick swordsticks

watchwords

wordsearch wordsearches

wordslinger wordslingers

wordsman swordsman backswordsman

wordsman swordsman swordsmanship swordsmanships

wordsman wordsmanship swordsmanship swordsmanships

wordsmen swordsmen backswordsmen

wordsmith swordsmith swordsmiths

wordsmith wordsmiths swordsmiths

wordspinner wordspinners