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How can you ban language, words? How’re words offensive? And why should I have to tolerate your interpretation? I’m the one using the word. Ask me how I’m using it, don’t tell me. And if you don’t like the way I’m using it, so what? It’s my right. It’s my freedom of expression. Without that, we’re nothing but slaves. My language, now fuck off! John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten, re court case against Richard Branson and record shop for publicly displaying record cover with the words, ‘Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols’ censored
I get just as much of a thrill out of constructing a good sentence that gets a laugh at the end as I do from a joke. Julian Clary
Prose = words in their best order; – poetry = the best words in the best order. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, Table Talk
I just like the word; it gives me confidence … Gone … Gone … It’s got a sort of woody quality about it … Newspaper. Litter Bin. Dreadful tinny sort of a word … Sausage: there’s a good woody sort of word … Antelope: tinny sort of word … Monty Python’s Flying Circus s4e3: The Light Entertainment War, BBC 1974
Writing is nothing less than thought transference, the ability to send one's ideas out into the world, beyond time and distance, taken at the value of the words, unbound from the speaker. Arthur M Jolly, interview Purple Pencil Adventures 2010
When one with honeyed words but evil mind
Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state. Euripides, Orestes
He’s gone and who knows how he may report
Thy words by adding fuel to the flame? John Milton
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness. Samuel Beckett
There is no use indicting words; they are no shoddier than what they peddle. Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies, 1958
Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words. Baruch Spinoza
Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of to-morrow. Joseph Conrad
Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality. Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’ John Greenleaf Whittier, The Brewing of Soma, 1872
cf.
There’s nought as sad in word or scene
Than knowing the things that might have been. esias
It’s good food and not fine words that keeps me alive. Moliere aka Jean-Baptiste Poquelin
No more words. The Hollow Crown: Henry IV part II ***** starring Jeremy Irons & Simon Russell Beale & Tom Hiddleston & Alun Armstrong & David Bamber & Julie Walters & Niamh Cusack & David Dawson & Michaelle Dockery et al, director Richard Eyre, BBC 2012
Good phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. William Shakespeare, II Henry IV 69-70, Shallow to Bardolph et al
Be wary how you place your words. William Shakespeare, I Henry VI III ii 3
O monstrous, what reproachful words are these? ... These words are razors to my wounded heart. William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus I i 305 & 311
Away with slavish words and servile thoughts! ibid. II i 18, Aaron's soliloquy
Why should she live to fill our world with words? William Shakespeare, Richard Duke of York V v 44, Richard of Gloucester
Ah, kill my with the weapon, not with words! My breast can better brook thy dagger’s point. ibid. V vi 26-27, King Henry to Richard Duke of Gloucester
Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word. William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors III ii 20
No words! William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost I ii 225
No more words. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream IV ii 40, Bottom
Whate’er you think, good words, I think, were best. William Shakespeare, King John IV iii 28
The fool hath planted in his memory
An army of good words. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice III v 61-62, Lorenzo to Jessica and Lancelot
For these fellows of infinite tongue,
that can rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they
do always reason themselves out again. William Shakespeare, Henry V V ii 156-158, King Harry
Words before blows. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar V i 27, Brutus
But what care I for words? Yet words do well
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear. William Shakespeare, As You Like It III v 112-113, Pheobe to Silvius
I will not eat my word. ibid. V iv 147
These are but wild and whirling words, my lord. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I v 133
Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words. ibid. II ii 192-193
Suit the action to the word, and the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature. ibid. III ii 18-19, Hamlet
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go. ibid. III iii 97
O speak to me no more;
These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears. ibid. III iv 95-96, mother to son