Jessamyn West Quotes

The wound that’s made by fire will heal, But the wound that’s made by tongue will never heal.

Words are really powerful. I don't believe that axiom at all - words can absolutely hurt you. Words can wound. They can do a lot of damage. I think they can do way more damage than sticks and stones. I'll take sticks and stones.

The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh: but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones.

There are worse words than cuss words, there are words that hurt.

Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don't go away, they just echo around.

I just think that as much as we say sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me - words do hurt.

No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours.

Words can be like baseball bats when used maliciously.

Sometimes words are harder than blows.

They say that abandonment is a wound that never heals. I say only that an abandoned child never forgets.

A person can destroy me with two words. It can just be the way they say them, the inflection.

Often, I think bullying - especially in its adult, verbal forms - is the sort of thing you don't realize till the end of the day, and it's a horrible feeling to realize something wasn't just a bland statement but was actually cruel. But then, we're all capable of things that are breathtakingly cruel.

I've learnt the power of words. I've had the worst thrown at me.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can make me think I deserved it.

My body Healed quickly. But the wound to my psyche was deep. Wide. First aid, too little, too late, left me hemorrhaging inside, the blood unstaunched by psychological bandage or love's healing magic. Eventually it scabbed over, a thick, ugly welt of memory. I work to conceal it, but no matter how hard I try, once in a while something makes me pick at it until the scarring bleeds. In my arms, Ashante cries, innocence ripped apart by circumstance. Bloodied by inhuman will. Time will prove a tourniquet. But she will always be at risk of infection. (124)

How could one sentence uttered in anger cause so much damage? But then words were the most powerful thing in the universe. Cuts and bruises always healed, but words spoken in anger were most often permanent. They didn’t damage the body, they destroyed the spirit. (Acheron)

The worst wounds, the deadliest of them, aren't the ones people see on the outside. They're the ones that make us bleed internally.

Weapons are less harmful than words.

It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me - such bullshit.

Words can bruise and break hearts, and minds as well. There are no black and blue marks, no broken bones to put in plaster casts, and therefore no prison bars for the offender.

But I didn't understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.

Incurable wounds are those inflicted by tongue and eye, by mockery and disdain.