Английский для экономистов (учебник английского языка)

Words are the tools of thinking. It naturally follows, then, that the more words you have at your command, the clearer and accurate your thinking will be.

Words are medium of exchange, the coin with which you do business with all those around you. With words you relate people, communicate your feelings and thoughts to them, persuade them, control them. In short, through words you shape your own destiny, for your words are your personality; your vocabulary is you.

How do words treat you? Are you comfortable with them? Do they easily come to you? When you write and speak, do your words paint the sort of picture of you that will do you the most good in the highly competitive world? Does your language usually present a true reflection of your mind, your emotions, and your personality? Or does it sometimes betray and blur your thoughts? Do people occasionally misunderstand you? Or can you compel them to listen, react, obey?

From now on we want you to look at words intently, to be inordinately curious about them and to examine them syllable and syllable, letter by letter.

They are your tools of understanding and self-expression. Collect them. Keep them in condition. Learn how to handle them. Develop a fastidious, but not a fussy, choice. Work always toward good taste in their use. Train your ear for their harmonies.

We urge you not to take words for granted just because they have been part of your daily speech since childhood. You must examine them.

Words are not dead things.

They are fairly wriggling with life. They are exciting and mysterious tokens of our thoughts, and like human beings, they are born, come to maturity, grow old and die, and sometimes they are even reborn in a new age. A word, from its birth to its death, is a process, not a static thing.

Words, like living trees, have roots, branches, and leaves. If the roots are the origin of words and the branches are the word families that stem out of them, the leaves of this language tree would be the words themselves and their meaning.

Like everyone else, you want certain things from life. No matter what those benefits are, or what particular way you have chosen to go about getting them, you know that your first and most effective means will be the words you use.

In short, the satisfaction and the success you get out of life depend very greatly on the skill with which you communicate your needs, your desires, your opinions to others.

Words are explosive.