Semantic Nuance Quotes

every word calls up far more of a picture than its actual meaning is supposed to do, and the writer has to deal with all these silent associations as well as with the uttered significance.

A different language is a different vision of life.

I don't think of 'heretic' as a pejorative term - necessarily.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn't call himself a poet.

Use the right word, not its second cousin.

I looked up 'standard' in the dictionary. There are eleven different definitions.

One can neither agree nor disagree with a terminological proposal, as long as it is clear that it is just that: terminological.

Every word wants to be taken literally, else it decays into a lie. But one mustn't take any word literally, else the world becomes a madhouse.

The map is not the territory (coined by Alfred Korzybski), and the name is not the thing named.

I do not like this word, bomb. It is not a bomb; it is a device which is exploding.

A thing is a thing, not what is said of a thing

Language, after all, is organic. You can't force words into existence. You can't force new meanings into words. And some words can't or won't or shouldn't be laundered or neutered. Language develops naturally.

The Infinite is only a manner of speaking.

Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective

...language is never innocent.

You can only have a war with another country. You can't have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids.

Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages?" August said. "And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word.

The Word 'Repulse': I hate this word. I believe 'repel' is a perfectly good word, and 'repulsion' is the noun, as well as the title of an excellent Dinosaur Jr. song. A compulsion compels you; an impulse impels you. Nobody ever says 'compulse' or 'impulse' as a verb. So why would you ever say 'repulse'? This word haunts me in my sleep, like a silver dagger dancing before my eyes. Renee looked it up and I was wrong. But I still kind of think I'm right.

Isn't it funny the way some combinations of words can give you--almost apart from their meaning--a thrill like music?

I want to make clear only that words are not the things spoken about, and that there is no such thing as an object in absolute isolation.

I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious.

All my plays have these titles that are oddly tricky. I like that something can look like one thing but mean two different things. Language is really unstable in that way.

I never say I'm an "ist" of any kind unless I know how the other person is defining it.

Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.

I'm a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible.