“Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it.”
A vida é assim, está cheia de palavras que não valem a pena, ou que valeram e já não valem, cada uma que ainda formos dizendo tirará o lugar a outra mais merecedora, que o seria não tanto por si mesma, mas pelas consequências de tê-la dito.
Source: The Cave (2000), p. 28 (Vintage 2003)
Original
A vida é assim, está cheia de palavras que não valem a pena, ou que valeram e já não valem, cada uma que ainda formos dizendo tirará o lugar a outra mais merecedora, que o seria não tanto por si mesma, mas pelas consequências de tê-la dito.
The Cave (2000)
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José Saramago 138
Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in … 1922–2010Related quotes
Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6.

“Whatever is worth saying, can be stated in fifty words or less.”
as quoted by Gian-Carlo Rota in Words spoken at the memorial service for S. M. Ulam (The Lodge, Los Alamos, New Mexico, May 17, 1984), published in The Mathematical Intelligencer, Volume 6, Number 4 / December, 1984

“Better say nothing at all. Language is worth a thousand pounds a word!”
Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

“Zum Unterrichtsgesetze,” as cited in The Politics of Cultural Despair (1961), p. 31

“Be silent or let thy words be worth more than silence.”