“… Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]…”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Jonathan Safran Foer 262

Novelist 1977

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“Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one.”

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“Do you know what humanity is, what the word "human" means? The word human”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

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Context: Do you know what humanity is, what the word "human" means? The word human where I come from - which is the enlightened state - means suffering. So when you say you're a human being, you're saying you're a suffering being. And I say you have to get rid of your suffering and then be being. Enlightenment is the state of being which I am, this moment and every moment. So I'm not suffering. But humanity loves to suffer. People love to suffer because they love to get excited with their feelings. All you've got to do is get rid of your feelings, which are always negative. Why not get rid of the whole lot of it, now? That means you don't know feelings and then you don't know negativity, and then you'd be in love, and then you would love everybody by not loving anybody in particular as a feeling. That's the state of enlightenment.

“It is not enough to speak; you must know words.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light
Context: It is not enough to speak; you must know words. When you have said, "I am in pain," or when you have said, "I am right," you have said nothing in reality, you have only spoken to yourself. The real presence of truth is not in every word of truth, because of the wear and tear of words, and the fleeting multiplicity of arguments. One must have the gift of persuasion, of leaving to truth its speaking simplicity, its solemn unfoldings. It is not I who will be able to speak from the depths of myself. The attention of men dazzles me when it rises before me. The very nakedness of paper frightens me and drowns my looks. Not I shall embellish that whiteness with writing like light. I understand of what a great tribune's sorrow is made; and I can only dream of him who, visibly summarizing the immense crisis of human necessity in a work which forgets nothing, which seems to forget nothing, without the blot even of a misplaced comma, will proclaim our Charter to the epochs of the times in which we are, and will let us see it. Blessed be that simplifier, from whatever country he may come, — but all the same, I should prefer him, at the bottom of my heart, to speak French.