Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague.

Infelicity is an ill to which all acts are heir which have the general character of ritual or ceremonial, all conventional acts.

Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done.

Certainly ordinary language has no claim to be the last word, if there is such a thing.

Sentences are not as such either true or false.

But I owe it to the subject to say, that it has long afforded me what philosophy is so often thought, and made, barren of - the fun of discovery, the pleasures of co-operation, and the satisfaction of reaching agreement.

Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague.

In the one defence, briefly, we accept responsibility but deny that it was bad: in the other, we admit that it was bad but don't accept full, or even any, responsibility.

There are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

In other words, I have no truck for anyone who goes out and does an eclectic building.

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.

Style is as much under the words as in the words. It is as much the soul as it is the flesh of a work.

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

So, in other words, how you respond to a sculpture, how a viewer sees the sculpture, is vital.

I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling.

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us.

The President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound... These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.

They call it golf because all the other four-letter words were taken.

In fact, words are well adapted for description and the arousing of emotion, but for many kinds of precise thought other symbols are much better.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.

If words are not things, or maps are not the actual territory, then, obviously, the only possible link between the objective world and the linguistic world is found in structure, and structure alone.

We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.

I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence.

I think I am too interested in my own ideas to copy anyone else's, but I find that other people's imagery, the flow of language in the outside world, games with words, and ideas about relationships are all most important to me.

You need the words, you need the script, you need the material, you need the commitment, you need the passion, it's like we depend on writers, we depend on producers, directors depend on us and once things are in the divine order as they happen.

All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.

It does not require many words to speak the truth.

Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words.

That's one strength that Stevie has. She's really not a strong instrumentalist in any way. Her instrument is her voice and her words. And it keeps her focused on the very center of that.

Be simple in words, manners, and gestures. Amuse as well as instruct. If you can make a man laugh, you can make him think and make him like and believe you.

I say there're no depressed words just depressed minds.

If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.

When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.

When I write a song, it's all about the riff - the riff first, then the words come later.

What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.

In a society in which equality is a fact, not merely a word, words of racial or sexual assault and humiliation will be nonsense syllables.

Lapped in poetry, wrapped in the picturesque, armed with logical sentences and inalienable words.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common.

How often misused words generate misleading thoughts.

I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer.

There's no wobble in Bush. If anything, the opposite. Right after hello, the next words out of his mouth are: I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions.