“A word spoken in season, at the right moment, is the mother of ages.”

— Thomas Carlyle

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 561.
1890s and attributed from posthumous publications

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Thomas Carlyle481

Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881

Charles Jefferys (1807–1865) British music publisher

A Word in Season, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“An SS came toward us wielding a club. He commanded:
"Men to the left! Women to the right!"
Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight simple, short words. Yet that was the moment when I left my mother. There was no time to think, and I already felt my father's hand press against mine: we were alone.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

“Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of little children tends towards the formation of character.”

Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Universalist minister (1771–1852)

Manuscript, Sermons; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 216.

“The number of elements that have to go into a hit would break a computer down…. the right season for that play, the right historical moment, the right tonality.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

The New York Times (9 May 1984)

“Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don't compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest.”

Sam Levenson (1911–1980) American journalist

“India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

January, 1921
India's Rebirth
Context: India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples. And that which must seek now to awake is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma.

“Our cabaret 'Cabaret Voltaire' is a gesture... Every word that is spoken and sung here says at least this one thing: that this humiliating age has not succeeded in winning our respect.”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

Ball's diary entry, 1916; as quoted in Looking at Dada, eds. Sarah Ganz Blythe & Edward D. Powers - The Museum of Modern Art New York, ISBN: 087070-705-1; p. 3
1916