
Source: Belief and Meaning (1992), Ch. 1 : Belief, Meaning, and the External World
Broken Lights p. 25 Diaries 1951.
Source: Belief and Meaning (1992), Ch. 1 : Belief, Meaning, and the External World
“I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion.”
Speech at Arlington Cemetery, Decoration Day (30 May 1868)
1860s
Context: I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here, beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung. With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept, plighted faith may be broken, and vaunted virtue be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke: but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.
A vida é assim, está cheia de palavras que não valem a pena, ou que valeram e já não valem, cada uma que ainda formos dizendo tirará o lugar a outra mais merecedora, que o seria não tanto por si mesma, mas pelas consequências de tê-la dito.
Source: The Cave (2000), p. 28 (Vintage 2003)
The Crowded Street http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page253, st. 10 (1864)
“Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.”
§ 6
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
Canto II, I
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)