Collected Poems (1992), When the Watchman Saw the Light (1900)
Context: Of course many people will have much to say.
We should listen. But we won't be deceived
by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great.
Someone else indispensable and unique and great
can always be found at a moment's notice.
“Many have a way with words. They label themselves seers but they will not see. Many have the gift of tongue but nothing to say. Do not listen to them. Many who have words and tongue have no ear, they cannot listen and they will not hear.”
"Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers" (1981)
Source: in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, p. 171
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Gloria E. Anzaldúa 7
Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory 1942–2004Related quotes
“If listening was as important as speaking, you would have twice as many ears as mouths.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)
Source: Elegies, Lines 421-423, as translated by Dorothea Wender.
Source: Hilkhot De'ot (Laws Concerning Character Traits), Chapter 7, Section 6, pp. 51-52
“You may have as many words as you please, – only I can’t stay to hear them.”
Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. III : A Controversy; Helen to Gilbert
Letter to Michael van der Peet (September 1979), quoted in "Mother Teresa Did Not Feel Christ's Presence for Last Half of Her Life, Letters Reveal", Fox News (24 August 2007) http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/08/24/mother-teresa-did-not-feel-christ-presence-for-last-half-her-life-letters/
1970s
Context: Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves but does not speak.
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"”
Bret Harte wrote a famous parody of this famous poem, "Mrs. Judge Jenkins" in which the Judge marries Maud, and which he ends with the lines:
Maud soon thought the Judge a bore,
With all his learning and all his lore;
And the Judge would have bartered Maud's fair face
For more refinement and social grace.
If, of all words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are, "It might have been,"
More sad are these we daily see:
"It is, but hadn't ought to be".
Maud Muller (1856)
Context: Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"