Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

He who wants to persuade should put his trust, not in the right argument, but in the right word.

Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

I mean, language fascinates me anyway, and different words have different energies and you can change the whole drive of a sentence.

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.

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.

We know that words cannot move mountains, but they can move the multitude; and men are more ready to fight and die for a word than for anything else. Words shape thought, stir feeling, and beget action; they kill and revive, corrupt and cure. The "men-of-words"- priests, prophets, intellectuals- have played a more decisive role in history than military leaders, statesmen, and businessmen.

Whatever one wishes to say, there is one noun only by which to express it, one verb only to give it life, one adjective only which will describe it. One must search until one has discovered them, this noun, this verb, this adjective, and never rest content with approximations, never resort to trickery, however happy, or to vulgarism, in order to dodge the difficulty.

One word is worth a thousand pictures. If it's the right word.

Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know more.

I'm so language-based and I'm so about communicating, and my art has always been very audience-based, and very about being functional and communicating something, and about feeling like I have to be heard.

Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.

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.

The power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.

Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons.

Words are such small things, like confetti in the brain, and yet they are color and clarify everything, they can stain the mind or warp the feelings.

Words, as you well know, can be powerful. - Digger

Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack.

There's a power in words. There's a power in being able to explain and describe and articulate what you know and feel and believe about the world, and about yourself.

MOUTH, n. In man, the gateway to the soul; in woman, the outlet of the heart.

Men command fewer words than they have ideas to express, and language, as Jean Paul said, is a dictionary of faded metaphors.

What a pity it is that there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a ribbon ... or a husband.

Be careful with words, they're dangerous. Be wary of them. They begat either demons or angels. It's up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as giving free rein to words

Words are so awesome. Words are containers for power. They carry either creative power or destructive power.

Our words set the direction for our lives.