Power Of The Written Word Quotes & Sayings

He realized that for Ponge there was no division between the work of writing and the work of seeing. For no word can be written without first having been seen, and before it finds its way to the page it must first have been part of the body, a physical presence that one has lived with in the same way one lives with one's heart, one's stomach, and one's brain. Memory, then, not so much as the past contained within us, but as proof of our life in the present. If a man is to be truly present among his surroundings, he must be thinking not of himself, but of what he sees. He might forget himself in order to be there. And from that forgetfulness arises the power of memory. — Paul Auster

You saw me, changed my life, made it better, and I'm completely fucking in love with you. — L. H. Cosway

Things spoken can be forgotten and forgiven, but the written word has the power to change the course of history, to alter our lives. — Teresa Mummert

Words written fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, can have as much of this power today as ever they had it then to come alive for us and in us and to make us more alive within ourselves. That, I suppose, is the final mystery as well as the final power of words: That not even across great distances of time and space do they ever lose their capacity for becoming incarnate. And when these words tell of virtue and nobility, when they move closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit by which we become fully human, the reading of them is sacramental; and a library is as holy a place as any temple is holy because through the words which are treasured in it the Word itself becomes flesh again and again and dwells among us and within us, full of grace and truth.
Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, in an essay called The Speaking and Writing of Words. — Frederick Buechner

Let the critics criticize and let the doers do. — Wynton Marsalis

I'm conservative, and people know where I stand. They can trust me to do what I say I'm going to do. I'm predictable. — Sharron Angle

What we call "the laws of nature" merely reflect the normal way in which God sustains or governs the natural world. Perhaps the most wicked concept that has captured the minds of modern people is the belief that the universe operates by chance. That is the nadir of foolishness. Elsewhere, I have written more extensively on the scientific impossibility of assigning power to chance, because chance is simply a word that describes mathematical possibilities.* Chance is not a thing. It has no power. It cannot do anything, and therefore it cannot influence anything, yet some have taken the word chance, which has no power, and diabolically used it as a replacement for the concept of God. But the truth, as the Bible makes clear, is that nothing happens by chance and that all things are under the sovereign government of God, which is exceedingly comforting to the Christian who understands it. — R.C. Sproul

God's tried and tested people will find their power in the sign spoken of in Exodus 31:12-18. They are to take their stand on the living word: "It is written." This is the only foundation upon which they can stand securely.53 — Ellen G. White

There are things you maybe could get by a male drill instructor that a female instructor absolutely is never going to let you get away with. Women are harder on women. — Loretta Reynolds

The Egyptians believed in sacred words, and there's a story about Isis tricking the great god Ra to reveal his secret magic word. The Hebrews believed there was great power in God's name. I find it sometimes ironic that the Christian prayer Our Father or Pater Noster finishes with the word Amen. Amen means 'hidden one.' It used to be the name of Ra who was called Amen Ra or Amen Osiris. The Our Father has aspects similar to what is written in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Maxim of Ani. The Freemasons use the golden triangle, as do Christian churches. It is an expensive and rare gift. — Carolyn Schield

But I have long loved the written word, and come to see in it the power of the sleeping lion. This is my name. This is who I am. This is how I got here. In the absence of an audience, I will write down my story so that it waits like a restful beast with lungs breathing and heart beating. — Lawrence Hill

Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

The written word held a power she almost revered: to be able to write so as to influence the hearts and minds of other readers seemed nothing short of a miracle. — Patti Callahan Henry

18For the word of the cross is b folly to c those who are perishing, but to us d who are being saved it is e the power of God. 19For it is written, — Anonymous

I was in, like, nine schools by ninth grade, so I moved a ton of times when I was younger. — Jessica Stroup

It [writing] has enormous meta-cognitive implications. The power is this: That you cannot only think in ways that you could not possibly think if you did not have the written word, but you can now think about the thinking that you do with the written word. There is danger in this, and the danger is that the enormous expressive and self-referential capacities of the written word, that is, the capacities to keep referring to referring to referring, will reach a point where you lose contact with the real world. And this, believe me, is very common in universities. There's a technical name for it, I don't know if we can use it on television, it's called "bullshit." But this is very common in academic life, where people just get a form of self-referentiality of the language, where the language is talking about the language, which is talking about the language, and in the end, it's hot air. That's another name for the same phenomenon. — John Rogers Searle

Around me the beautiful windows, connecting me to other lives and other times, to things done and also deliberately left undone, stood dark. Rose, I was sure, had acted out of love, yet for Iris her mother's absence had remained an unresolved sadness at the center of her life. I thought of what Rose had written about anger, about its power to corrupt, to make a space for evil. Maybe she was right. Maybe evil, that old-fashioned word, could be called other things, disharmony or dysfunction. Maybe Rose was right and evil wasn't attached top an individual as much as if was a force in the world, a seeing force, one that worked like a self-replicating virus, seeking to entangle, to ensnare, to undo beauty. [p.353] — Kim Edwards

You must be hungry, it is nothing, command these stones to become bread it is within Your power. Is it not written?" "Is it not also written, man can not live by bread alone but take nourishment from every word of God?" Yeshua countered not falling for Torgan's taunts. Torgan took Him up to a high hill and pointed over all the land. — J. Michael Morgan

The difference was principally in the invisible places toward which their respective hearts were turned. They dreamed of Cairo with its autonomous government, its army, its newspapers and its cinema, while he, facing in the same direction, dreamed just a little beyond Cairo, across the Bhar El Hamar to Mecca. They thought in terms of grievances, censorship, petitions and reforms; he, like any good Moslem who knows only the tenets of his religion, in terms of destiny and divine justice. If the word 'independence' was uttered, they saw platoons of Moslem soldiers marching through streets were all the signs were written in Arabic script, they saw factories and power plants rising from the fields; he saw skies of flame, the wings of avenging angels, and total destruction. — Paul Bowles

The Bible is the written word of God, and because it is written it is confined and limited by the necessities of ink and paper and leather. The Voice of God, however, is alive and free as the sovereign God is free. 'The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.' The life is in the speaking words. God's word in the Bible can have power only because it corresponds to God's Word in the universe. It is the present Voice which makes the written word powerful. Otherwise it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

I work with companies like Audiostiles to put together mixes for my restaurants. I even created a soundtrack for my television show. — Jose Andres

At root, I think that any given technology (think nuclear power, gunpowder, the written word ... ) has the potential to improve our lives, wound it, and also to create unexpected accidents. It's not the technology that's the problem, it's us, the users. However angelic or demonic, or thoughtful or thoughtless we happen to be is then amplified by our technologies. — Paolo Bacigalupi

My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel
it is, before all, to make you see. — Joseph Conrad

The question up for debate between Socrates and Phaedrus is whether the written word kills memory or aids it--whether it cripples the mind's power, or whether it cures it of its forgetfulness. — Maggie Nelson

There are many kinds of powers in the world - military power, power of the written word, intellectual power. We've tried and failed to bring peace with these kind of powers. The greatest power is the power of love. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Concering the power of the written word — Julie Hearn

Logic might be imagined to exist independent of writing - syllogisms can be spoken as well as written - but it did not. Speech is too fleeting to allow for analysis. Logic descended from the written word, in Greece as well as India and China, where it developed independently. Logic turns the act of abstraction into a tool for determining what is true and what is false: truth can be discovered in words alone, apart from concrete experience. Logic takes its form in chains: sequences whose members connect one to another. Conclusions follow from premises. These require a degree of constancy. They have no power unless people can examine and evaluate them. In contrast, an oral narrative proceeds by accretion, the words passing by in a line of parade past the viewing stand, briefly present and then gone, interacting with one another via memory and association. — James Gleick

This suspension of one's own reality, this being entirely alone in a strange city (at times I wondered if I had lost the power of speech) is an enriching state for a writer. Then the written word ... takes on an intensity of its own. Nothing gets exteriorized or dissipated; all is concentrated within. — May Sarton

To me, there's no better way to stir the soul than through the power of the written word. — Jake Parent

18For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. — Anonymous

This is the paradox of the power of literature: it seems that only when it is persecuted does it show its true powers, challenging authority, whereas in our permissive society it feels that it is being used merely to create the occasional pleasing contrast to the general ballooning of verbiage. — Italo Calvino

My task is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel
it is, before all, to make you see. That
and no more, and it is everything. — Joseph Conrad

It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written.
A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully and erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds, the corn become a black smut, and all libraries, of necessity, be burned to the ground as a consequence.
Only one answer: write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive. — William Carlos Williams

A man who writes a story is forced to put into it the best of his knowledge and the best of his feeling. The discipline of the written word punishes stupidity and dishonesty. A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. — John Steinbeck

The word is not just a sound or a written symbol. The word is a force; it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life. The word is the most powerful tool you have as a human; it is a tool of magic. — Miguel Angel Ruiz