Speech Quotes — page 62

As the Swiss inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden— "Speech is silvern, Silence is golden"; or, as I might rather express it: speech is of time, silence is of eternity.

We are very shy of asking questions of those who know enough to destroy with one word the hopes we live on.

Till again shall the change come, and words your lips say not Your hearts make all plain in the best wise they would And the world ye thought waning is glorious and good...

Every man is the original, rightful, and absolute owner of his own body; or in other words, every man is himself, is his self, if you please, and belongs to himself, and can only part from his self ownership, by the commission of a crime.

It is the hour when from the boughs The nightingale's high note is heard; It is the hour when lovers' vows Seem sweet in every whisper'd word.

There is no tongue that flatters like a lover's; and yet, in the exaggeration of his feelings, flattery seems to him commonplace.

A sign is in a conjoint relation to the thing denoted and to the mind.

A set of phrases learnt by rote; A passion for a scarlet coat; When at a play to laugh, or cry, Yet cannot tell the reason why: Never to hold her tongue a minute; While all she prates has nothing in it.

I realised what the Hindu religion meant. We speak often of the Hindu religion, of the Sanatan Dharma, but few of us really know what that religion is. Other religions are preponderatingly religions of faith and profession, but the Sanatan …

Words, once my stock, are wanting to commend So great a poet and so good a friend.

Words impede and either kill, or are killed by, perfect thought; but they are, as a scaffolding, useful, if not indispensable, for the building up of imperfect thought and helping to perfect it.

"Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

Possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. A distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a vast vocabulary. The problem in language is to express many ideas and thoughts with comparatively few words.

In the Ancient Period of Science, Technical Terms were formed in three different ways:—by appropriating common words and fixing their meaning;—by constructing terms containing a description;—by constructing terms containing reference to a …

You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm — we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish — ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, …

I chose therefore the name. "MAGICK" as essentially the most sublime, and actually the most discredited, of all the available terms. I swore to rehabilitate MAGICK, to identify it with my own career; and to compel mankind to respect, love, …

It was the warrior within Who called 'Awake, prepare for fight: Yet lose not memory in the din: Make of thy gentleness thy might: 'Make of thy silence words to shake The long-enthroned kings of earth:

He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.

And in this dying was brought to my mind the words of Christ: I thirst. For I saw in Christ a double thirst: one bodily; another spiritual...

Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

How can the Universe tell its own story save by making use of human speech; how convey its meanings to finite minds save by employing a thinker to declare them?

See! he sinks Without a word; and his ensanguined bier Is vacant in the west, while far and near Behold! each coward shadow eastward shrinks, Thou dost not strive, O sun, nor dost thou cry Amid thy cloud-built streets.

Grant me the power of saying things Too simple and too sweet for words!

Every single Act either weakeneth or improveth our Credit with other Men ; and as an habit of being just to our Word will confirm, so an habit of too freely dispensing with it must necessarily destroy it.