“Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.”
William Faulkner book Mosquitoes
Source: Mosquitoes
Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Time of Your Life
“Talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words.”
William Faulkner book Mosquitoes
Source: Mosquitoes
“The animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word.”
Margaret Atwood book Surfacing
Source: Surfacing
“Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?”
Ernest Hemingway book Men Without Women
Source: Men Without Women
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
Quoted as the opening passage of "BOOK ONE: The Functions of Language" in Language in Thought and Action (1949) by S. I. Hayakawa, p. 3
Words and Their Meanings (1940)
Context: A great deal of attention has been paid … to the technical languages in which men of science do their specialized thinking … But the colloquial usages of everyday speech, the literary and philosophical dialects in which men do their thinking about the problems of morals, politics, religion and psychology — these have been strangely neglected. We talk about "mere matters of words" in a tone which implies that we regard words as things beneath the notice of a serious-minded person.
This is a most unfortunate attitude. For the fact is that words play an enormous part in our lives and are therefore deserving of the closest study. The old idea that words possess magical powers is false; but its falsity is the distortion of a very important truth. Words do have a magical effect — but not in the way that magicians supposed, and not on the objects they were trying to influence. Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them. "A mere matter of words," we say contemptuously, forgetting that words have power to mould men's thinking, to canalize their feeling, to direct their willing and acting. Conduct and character are largely determined by the nature of the words we currently use to discuss ourselves and the world around us.
“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.”
Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman
Source: The Third Policeman (1967)
“I will not talk of non-intervention, for it is not an English word.”
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician
When an MP sought to correct Palmerston when he said "non-interference" instead of "non-intervention" in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1832/aug/02/germany-protocol-of-the-diet (2 August 1832) <br class="br">1830s
Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter
Words (between the lines of age)
Song lyrics, Harvest (1972)