“A slavish concern for the composition of words is the sign of a bankrupt intellect. Be gone, odious wasp! You smell of decayed syllables.”

“My intellect has been shaped under the sign of Spinoza's words, and it has tried not to be astounded, not to laugh, not to cry, but to understand.”

“You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.”

“Why are there five syllables in the word “monosyllabic”?”

“A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.”

“Walk with me world, upon my right hand walk,
speak to me Babel, that I may strive to assemble
of all these syllables a single word
before the purpose of speech is gone.”

“I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.”

“One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.”

“I see the pain on your face when you say the word intellectual, because it has so many syllables in it.”

“What are you? (Zarek)
I’m a nymph. (Astrid)
I hope you just left an important syllable off that word, princess. (Zarek)”