To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the music the words make.

—Truman Capote

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

—Thomas Jefferson

It has not been for nothing that the word has remained man’s principal toy and tool: without the meanings and values it sustains, all man’s other tools would be worthless.

—Lewis Mumford

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, / Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces / That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

—George Gordon Byron

The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.

—Luke 6:45

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

—Ariel and Will Durrant

The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

—Dorothy Nevill

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself

—Mark Twain

Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.

—Learned Hand

Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Write kind words in marble, insults in sand.

—Iranian proverb