Quotes & Sayings About Saying Words That Hurt

I hadn't fully realized just how powerful words could be before this. Whoever came up with the saying 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was talking out of his or her armpit. — Malorie Blackman

Such words only hurt when the person saying them means something to you. — Grace Draven

But something about the static truth of numbers hurt my brain. Numbers felt sharp. Words felt elastic and springy. Language had an unpredictable, quicksilver quality, saying one thing but meaning something else, varying from place to place but maintaining (against all evidence) that it was the same language. Thinking about words was ticklish and amusing. It was also easy, as if they fit into slots and patterns prepared for them in my mind. Numbers on the other hand, bounced right out of my mind. — Susanna Kaysen

I've been with thousands of women and you claimed the one night that you fucked four hundred billion men," I say and Shay smiles slightly. "Out of all those people, you're the only one that makes my heart hurt. Do you know how stupid I feel saying my heart hurts? I feel like a damn pussy, but I'm saying the words because they're true." "I give you heart trouble," Shay whispers. "You own my heart. I don't know if that's the same thing though." "For me, it is. — Bijou Hunter

Our language, tiger, our language: hundreds of thousands of available words, frillions of legitimate new ideas ... And yet, oh, and yet, we, all of us, spend all our days saying to each other the same things time after weary time: "I love you," "Don't go in there," "Get out," "You have no right to say that," "Stop it," "Why should I," "That hurt," "Help," "Marjorie is dead. — Stephen Fry

Sometimes silence means more than words filled with pity and regret. He squeezes my hand, and I know that is his way of saying that I'm not alone. That even though he doesn't know what it feels like to be me, because I hurt, he hurts. For the first time in my life, I find a great deal of comfort knowing that I don't have to carry this burden alone anymore. — J.B. McGee

Because that saying about sticks and stones is a pack of lies. Unkind words hurt more than anything else. You end up carrying them around in your head, wondering if they're true. Bruises fade, but self-doubt follows you forever. — Kate Lattey

At some of the darkest moments in my life, some people I thought of as friends deserted me-some because they cared about me and it hurt them to see me in pain; others because I reminded them of their own vulnerability, and that was more than they could handle. But real friends overcame their discomfort and came to sit with me. If they had not words to make me feel better, they sat in silence (much better than saying, "You'll get over it," or "It's not so bad; others have it worse") and I loved them for it. — Harold S. Kushner

While these thoughts crossed his mind, Margaret clung to the doorpost to steady herself: but a film came over her eyes - he was only just in time to catch her. 'Mother - mother!' cried he; 'Come down - they are gone, and Miss Hale is hurt!' He bore her into the dining-room, and laid her on the sofa there; laid her down softly, and looking on her pure white face, the sense of what she was to him came upon him so keenly that he spoke it out in his pain:
'Oh, my Margaret - my Margaret! no one can tell what you are to me! Dead - cold as you lie there, you are the only woman I ever loved! Oh, Margaret - Margaret!' Inarticulately as he spoke, kneeling by her, and rather moaning than saying the words, he started up, ashamed of himself, as his mother came in. She saw nothing, but her son a little paler, a little sterner than usual. — Elizabeth Gaskell

You haven't," he repeated. "You're stewin' on it."
This was true too. If I had a dollar for every time his words in his voice popped into my head and made me flinch the last two days, I could move to the Riviera. They even woke me up in the middle of the night. Then again, I had insomnia and always did, even as a kid. I regularly thought of stuff in my life, stuff that embarrassed me or hurt me or worried me or freaked me out and I couldn't get to sleep. Then, when I did, I'd wake up three, four times a night sometimes tossing and turning for hours before finding sleep again. This beautiful man saying those horrible words when talking about me was not only fresh, it was the worst of all my nightly demons by far and it would be in a way I knew would last the rest of my life. — Kristen Ashley

Gay and lifestyle. Two simple words. Yet for LGBT people, those two words, put together, are offensive and create hurt and anger. For decades anti-gay religious conservatives have used the term "gay lifestyle" as a missile to attack LGBT people, their community and struggle for equality. Used by others, it reveals their ignorance of the realities of everyday LGBT lives. We don't have lifestyles, we have lives.
Maybe saying "I disagree with the gay lifestyle" is just a nice way of saying "I hate fags" and demonstrates homophobia is still the issue. — Anthony Venn-Brown

What would happen to our lives, our world, if the parent could unconditionally affirm the child, saying in so many words: You are precious to us; you will always have our love and support; you are here to be who you are; try never to hurt another, but never stop trying to become yourself as fully as you can; when you fall and fail, you are still loved by us and welcomed to us, but you are also here to leave us, and to go onward toward your own destiny without having to worry about pleasing us. — James Hollis