Syllables Quotes

• Rhythm and sounds are born with syllables.

  Jean-Philippe Rameau

  Sound, Born, Rhythm

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• Series of syllables which have been learned by heart, forgotten, and learned anew must be similar as to their inner conditions at the times when they can be recited.

  Hermann Ebbinghaus

  Heart, Talking, Forgotten

  Hermann Ebbinghaus (1913). “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology”

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• One needs but to say that, in the case of an unfamiliar sequence of syllables, only about seven can be grasped in one act, but that with frequent repetition and gradually increasing familiarity with the series this capacity of consciousness may be increased

  Hermann Ebbinghaus

  Needs, May, Consciousness

  Hermann Ebbinghaus (1913). “Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology”

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• One of the deep fundamentals of poetry is the recurrence of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, lines, and stanzas. Repetition can be one of the most intoxicating features of poetry. It creates expectations, which can be fulfilled or frustrated. It can create a sense of boredom and complacency, but it can also incite enchantment and inspire bliss.

  Edward Hirsch

  Expectations, Boredom, Inspire

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• Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.

  Carl Sandburg

  Poetry, Barriers, Poet

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.318, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

  Victor Hugo

  Book, Reading, Healing

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• [Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.

  John Milton

  Italian, Numbers, Long

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• The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented . . . no insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth.

  John Quincy Adams

  Country, Mother, Hypocrisy

  "An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport". Book by John Quincy Adams (p.50), 1837.

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• So often we think that to be encouragers we have to produce great words of wisdom when, in fact, a few simple syllables of sympathy and an arm around the shoulder can often provide much needed comfort.

  Florence Littauer

  Encouragement, Simple, Thinking

  Florence Littauer (1989). “Silver Boxes: The Gift of Encouragement”, p.26, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• The leaves hop, scraping on the ground. It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice. It is in this solitude, a syllable, Out of these gawky flitterings, Intones its single emptiness, The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

  Wallace Stevens

  Winter, Ice, Sky

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play”, p.319, Vintage

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• In Paul Friedrich's book Proto-Indo-European Trees he identifies the "semantic primitives" of the Indo-European tribe of languages through a group of words that have not changed much through twelve thousand years - and those are tree names: especially birch, willow, adler, elm, ash, apple and beech (bher, wyt, alysos, ulmo, os, abul, bhago). Seed syllables, bija, of the life of the west.

  Gary Snyder

  Book, Years, Names

  Gary Snyder (2010). “The Practice of the Wild”, p.71, Counterpoint Press

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• This universe can very well be expressed in words and syllables which are not those of one's mother tongue.

  Tahar Ben Jelloun

  Mother, Tongue, Wells

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• I loathe hecklers. I haven't got a good syllable to say. When you come out of the club circuit and into the concert hall, they should be gone. There's an element of manners that should tell you that the ticket is dear and it's a different venue.

  Billy Connolly

  Tickets, Different, Hecklers

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• I thought that the world was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken?

  Octavio Paz

  Stars, Giants, Phrases

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• There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

  Audrey Niffenegger

  Love, Pregnancy, Writing

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• I don't mean to be rude—" he began, in a tone that threatened rudeness in every syllable. "Yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often," Dumbledore finished the sentence gravely.

  J. K. Rowling

  Mean, Rude, Tone

  J.K. Rowling (2015). “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, p.45, Pottermore

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• Syllables govern the world.

  George Bernard Shaw

  World

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

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Humor, Five

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• Over your breasts of motionless current, over your legs of firmness and water, over the permanence and the pride of your naked hair I want to be, my love, now that the tears are thrown into the raucous baskets where they accumulate, I want to be, my love, alone with a syllable of mangled silver, alone with a tip of your breast of snow.

  Pablo Neruda

  Pride, Hair, Snow

  Pablo Neruda (1990). “Selected Poems”, p.127, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• They stormed and jeered at one another in long meaningless words of about twenty syllables each.

  C. S. Lewis

  Long, Twenties, Meaningless

  C.S.Lewis (2016). “The Chronicles of Narnia Vol IV: The Silver Chair”, p.60, ENRICH CULTURE GROUP LIMITED

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• There is not, in the Constitution, a syllable that implies that persons, born within the territorial limits of the United States, have allegiance imposed upon them on account of their birth in the country, or that they will be judged by any different rule, on the subject of treason, than persons of foreign birth.

  Lysander Spooner

  Country, United States, Different

  Henry Bool, Lysander Spooner, Edwin C. Walker (1972). “Individualist anarchist pamphlets”

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• The basic rhymes in English are masculine, which is to say that the last syllable of the line is stressed: "lane" rhymes with "pain", but it also rhymes with "urbane" since the last syllable of "urbane" is stressed. "Lane" does not rhyme with "methane".

  James Fenton

  Pain, Stressed, Doe

  "Slave to the rhythm" by James Fenton, www.theguardian.com. October 26, 2002.

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• I want to see thirst In the syllables, Tough fire In the sound; Feel through the dark For the scream.

  Pablo Neruda

  Dark, Fire, Sound

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• I had a publisher who felt comics were just for little kiddies, so he never wanted me to use words of more than two syllables.

  Stan Lee

  Two, Use, Littles

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• Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.

  Dana Gioia

  Cousin, Real, Names

  Dana Gioia (2016). “99 Poems: New & Selected”, p.22, Macmillan

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