Words Matter Week

March 1–7 is National Words Matter Week, (Words Matter Week) sponsored again this year by the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors. In honor of this week, below are some quotes about words.







When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain. – William Shakespeare

Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. – Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. – C.S. Lewis

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes. – Theodore Dreiser

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. – James Michener

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music the words make. – Truman Capote

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

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. – Hart Crane

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. – Author Unknown

A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one. – Baltasar Gracián

He that uses many words for the explaining any subject doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink. – John Ray

There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes. – William Makepeace Thackeray