“Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, "Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words." A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

Orual
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, "Child, t…" by Clive Staples Lewis?
Clive Staples Lewis photo
Clive Staples Lewis 272
Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist 1898–1963

Related quotes

Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo

“It’s harder to say no when you really mean it.”

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 9

Kate DiCamillo photo

“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Other sources
Source: Banksy In His Own Words- Interview At The Sun https://web.archive.org/web/20181102203920/http://graffart.eu/blog/2010/09/banksy-in-his-own-words-interview-at-the-sun/, Graffart.eu, Retrieved 2 November 2018

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Nithyananda photo
Norman Cousins photo

“What a man really says when he says that someone else can be persuaded by force, is that he himself is incapable of more rational means of communication.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter.

Robert Frost photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Noel Gallagher photo

Related topics