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In your question, you seem to already be aware of what differentiates 曰{いわ}く from 日{ひ}, which is that the middle stroke does not go all the way across, so that it does not touch the vertical stroke on the right side.

So I think the issue your having is the same as one that I remember having a long time ago when first learning kanji, which was an underappreciation of how exacting the Japanese language is about how kanji are written. For me, it was the difference between and that first confused and then educated me about how what I thought were subtle differences were actually big differences. In English, we can be a lot more flexible about how to write a character without losing the understanding of which character it is. Probably because with so many fewer characters, the risk of ambiguity is less, though that's just a pet hypothesis of mine.

In any case, for the most part, in Japanese small differences like that which differentiates 日{ひ} and 曰{いわ}く really do matter, and signify entirely different characters. (Which negates the need to answer your other question about how it is the same character is used for such different things, since they are not, in fact, the same character).

Take a look at this page, or this page, each of which provudes lists of kanji characters that look very similar. Note, for example, the subtle differences between 己{おのれ}, 已{のみ}, and 巳{み}.



Hope that helps.

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