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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• We're in a world of truncated sentences, soundbites and Twitter... [Language] is being eroded -- it's changing. Our expressiveness and our ease with some words is being diluted so that the sentence with more than one clause is a problem for us, and the word of more than two syllables is a problem for us.

  Ralph Fiennes

  Two, Ease, World

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Eva. Every day I've climbed up the belfry chanting a lucky chant at one syllable per beat, "To-day-to-day-let-her-be-here-to-day-to-day.

  David Mitchell

  Lucky, Beats, Chanting

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• It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Lonely, Long, Stories

  Naomi Shihab Nye (2009). “I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven”, p.3, Harper Collins

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• Have I mentioned that I expect death around every turn, that every blue sky has a safe sailing out of it, that every bus runs me over, that every low, mean syllable uttered in my direction seems to intimate the violence of murder, that every family seems like an opportunity for ruin and every marriage a ceremony into which calamity will fall and hearts will be broken and lives destroyed and people branded by the mortifications of love?

  Rick Moody

  Love, Running, Fall

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• I am SHADOW, and my dwelling is near to the Catacombs of Ptolemais, and hard by those dim plains of Helusion which border upon the foul Charonian canal." And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling, and shuddering, and aghast, for the tones in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to syllable fell duskly upon our ears in the well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Voice, Dwelling, Departed

  Edgar Allan Poe (1857). “The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe: Poems and tales. Eureka, an essay on the material and spiritual universe”, p.294

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• I have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly.

  Jane Austen

  Action, Wanted, Sensibility

  Jane Austen (1811). “Sense and Sensibility:: A Novel. In Three Volumes”, p.187

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• The muffled syllables that Nature speaks Fill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks, She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

  George Santayana

  Spirit, Speak, Longing

  George Santayana (1922). “Poems”

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• What are you? (Zarek) I’m a nymph. (Astrid) I hope you just left an important syllable off that word, princess. (Zarek)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Princess, Nymphs, Important

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• When he frowned again, she was fairly sure that the nomenclature did not please him, and she found herself wishing she had been birthed to other syllables.

  J.R. Ward

  Wish, Nomenclature, Found

  J.R. Ward (2011). “Lover Unleashed: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.80, Penguin

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• Still may syllables jar with time,
  Still may reason war with rhyme,
  Resting never!

  Ben Jonson

  War, Poetry, May

  Ben Jonson, “A Fit Of Rhyme Against Rhyme”

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• My laboratory,' I said, experimentally, drawing out each syllable. 'Why is it that saying it like that always makes me want to follow it with 'mwoo-hah-hah-hahhhhh'? ' 'You were overexposed to Hammer Films as a child?' - Harry Dresden & Bob the Skull, Changes, Jim Butcher

  Jim Butcher

  Children, Skulls, Drawing

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• The Brain - is wider than the Sky - For - put them side by side - The one the other will contain With ease - and You - beside - The Brain is deeper than the sea - For- hold them - Blue to Blue - The one the other will absorb - As Sponges - Buckets - do - The Brain is just the weight of God - For - Heft them - Pound for Pound - And they will differ - if they do - As Syllable from Sound.

  Emily Dickinson

  Blue, Sea, Sky

  Emily Dickinson (2009). “The Pocket Emily Dickinson”, p.101, Shambhala Publications

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• It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man's hand and the wisdom in a tree's root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Stars, Children, Distance

  "Transcript for the Piece Audio version of A Wizard of Earthsea: A Big Read Documentary". www.prx.org.

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