“Empty words almost echo within themselves”

This Business of Living (1935-1950)
Source: Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950
Context: When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves.

Source: The Odyssey

Woman's Wit, Act V (1697).

Part III Poems, "Reflection from Various Surfaces" (April 18, 1853)
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)
Context: By the hollow mauntain-side
Questions strange I shout for ever,
While echoes far and wide
Seem to mock my vain endeavour;
Still I shout, for though they never
Cast my borrowed voice aside,
Words from empty words they sever—
Words of Truth from words of Pride.

Source: The Longest Ride

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian
Context: Pericles' words are echoed in other critical speeches of later Western history... Lincoln at Gettysburg... Churchill's... repeated promise to the British people... of "blood, toil, tears, and sweat." And no wonder, for both orator's knew their Thucydides and knew this speech [Funeral Oration over the Athenian dead in the first year of the Peloponnesian War].... the most obvious later parallel is the 1961 presidential address of John F. Kennedy.... When he told of the sacrifices yet to come, like Pericles he pulled no punches.... In neither case is there a confession of atheism, just an implied acknowledgement that a politician is no oracle and has no business speaking on behalf of heaven.

Source: American Hunger (1977), p. 77