Quotes about Words

Reading is a gift, but only if the words are taken into the soul--eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight.

All serious and good writing anticipates precisely this kind of reading-ruminative and leisurely, a dalliance with words in contrast to wolfing down information.

There is no living the life of faith, whether by prophet or person, without some kind of sustaining vision like this. At some deep level we need to be convinced, and in some way or other we need periodic reminders, that no words are mere words. In particular, God's words are not mere words. They are promises that lead to fulfillments. God performs what he announces. God does what he says.

Priest and wise man and prophet alike felt that their professional well-being was threatened by Jeremiah's singularity. Panicked, they plotted his disgrace. Their "law" and "counsel" and "words" were in danger of being exposed as pious frauds by Jeremiah's honest and passionate life.

God reveals himself, that is, in creation and in Christ, in ways we can see and hear and touch and taste, in place and person. Beauty is the term we apply to these hints of transcendence, these perceptions that there is more going on here than we can account for. And that is how we come to identify as apostles of the gospel the men and women and, yes, children, who use words and images and sounds and textures to wake us up to beauty latent and implicit all around us.

Even though innocent, anything I say incriminates me; blameless as I am, my defense just makes me sound worse.

Teaching resurrects dead words so they live again.

It's your heart, not the dictionary, that gives meaning to your words.

But most wonderful of all is the fact that we who have consecrated ourselves to him, honor him not only with our voices and with the sound of words, but also with complete elevation of soul, so that we choose to give testimony unto him rather than to preserve our own lives.

The next time you feel rejection's sting, remember God's words to Samuel: "It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me." (1 Sam. 8:7)

If you watch what you think about, you won't have to watch what you talk about.

The same way that Jesus became flesh, the Holy Spirit becomes words, and when they are spoken, they bring life.