"No Religion is an Island", p. 264 
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997) 
Context: One of the results of the rapid depersonalization of our age is a crisis of speech, profanation of language. We have trifled with the name of God, we have taken the name and the word of the Holy in vain. Language has been reduced to labels, talk has become double-talk. We are in the process of losing faith in the reality of words.
Yet prayer can happen only when words reverberate with power and inner life, when uttered as an earnest, as a promise. On the other hand, there is a high degree of obsolescence in the traditional language of the theology of prayer. Renewal of prayer calls for a renewal of language, of cleansing the words, of revival of meanings.
The strength of faith is in silence, and in words that hibernate and wait. Uttered faith must come out as a surplus of silence, as the fruit of lived faith, of enduring intimacy.
Theological education must deepen privacy, strive for daily renewal of innerness, cultivate ingredients of religious existence, reverence and responsibility.
                                    
“Fluency [is] smooth, rapid, effortless use of language.”
Source: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 1987, p. 421
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David Crystal 24
British linguist and writer 1941Related quotes
                                        
                                        The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age (2004) 
Context: The computer, with its multiplying forums for spontaneous free expression from e-mail to listservs and blogs, has increased facility and fluency of language but degraded sensitivity to the individual word and reduced respect for organized argument, the process of deductive reasoning. The jump and jitter of us commercial television have demonstrably reduced attention span in the young.
                                    
                                
                                    “Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's
claws”
                                
                                
                                
                                
                            
                                        
                                        An American Prayer (1978) 
Variant: Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth a raven´s claws…
                                    
“I don't think any of us can do much about the rapid growth of new technology.”
                                        
                                         "Neil Postman Ponders High Tech" at Online Newshour : Online Forum (17 January 1996) http://www.promotesigns.com/postman_1-17.html, also slightly paraphrased in Theology of TV : The Impact of TV (2010) by Christian Mogler, p. 24, as "While we can ́t do much about the rapid growth of new technology, it is possible for us to learn how to control our own uses of technology." 
Context: I don't think any of us can do much about the rapid growth of new technology. A new technology helps to fuel the economy, and any discussion of slowing its growth has to take account of economic consequences. However, it is possible for us to learn how to control our own uses of technology. The "forum" that I think is best suited for this is our educational system. If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it.
                                    
                                        
                                        From A Note on Poetry (circa 1936) quoted in Modern American Poetry (1950) by Louis Untermeyer 
General sources
                                    
“Prose uses the medium of language whilst poetry serves language and explores it.”
The Great Modern Poets, London, 2006
                                        
                                        "On the Conservation of Force" (1862),  p. 280 
Popular Lectures on Scientific Subjects (1881) 
Context: The external work of man is of the most varied kind as regards the force or ease, the form and rapidity, of the motions used on it, and the kind of work produced. But both the arm of the blacksmith who delivers his powerful blows with the heavy hammer, and that of the violinist who produces the most delicate variations in sound, and the hand of the lacemaker who works with threads so fine that they are on the verge of the invisible, all these acquire the force which moves them in the same manner and by the same organs, namely, the muscles of the arm. An arm the muscles of which are lamed is incapable of doing any work; the moving force of the muscle must be at work in it, and these must obey the nerves, which bring to them orders from the brain. That member is then capable of the greatest variety of motions; it can compel the most varied instruments to execute the most diverse tasks.