Syllables Quotes - Page 5

• I never heard of anyone who was really literate or who ever really loved books who wanted to suppress any of them. Censors only read a book with great difficulty, moving their lips as they puzzle out each syllable, when someone tells them that the book is unfit to read.

  Robertson Davies

  Love, Moving, Book

  Robertson Davies (1949). “The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks”, Clarke, Irwin

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• For how shall we fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine, if we ourselves spread uncertainty and doubt by constant changes in its outward structure? ...Here, too, we can learn by the example of the Catholic Church. Though its doctrinal edifice, and in part quite superfluously, comes into collision with exact science and research, it is none the less unwilling to sacrifice so much as one little syllable of its dogmas... it is only such dogmas which lend to the whole body the character of a faith.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Character, Sacrifice

  "Mein Kampf". Book by Adolf Hitler, Volume II, Chapter 5 - Philosophy and Organization, 1926.

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• We are only syllables of the perfect Word.

  Caryll Houselander

  Faith, Inspiration, Perfect

  Caryll Houselander, Thomas Hoffman (2000). “A Child in Winter: Advent, Christmas and Epiphany with Caryll Houselander”, p.2, Rowman & Littlefield

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• There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly.

  Annie Dillard

  Children, Long, Age

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.107, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• [T]here is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Law, Empowering, Spirit

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2004). “The Federalist Papers”, p.576, Simon and Schuster

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• The whole fauna of human fantasies, their marine vegetation, drifts and luxuriates in the dimly lit zones of human activity, as though plaiting thick tresses of darkness. Here, too, appear the lighthouses of the mind, with their outward resemblance to less pure symbols. The gateway to mystery swings open at the touch of human weakness and we have entered the realms of darkness. One false step, one slurred syllable together reveal a man's thoughts.

  Louis Aragon

  Marine, Men, Swings

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• My favorite song he ever wrote was 'Cold Cold Heart.' If you think about it, the lyric to 'Cold Cold Heart,' see how many two syllable words are in that song. Very, very few. ... Verses and the choruses have very few two syllable words. 'I tried so hard my dear to show that you're my everything.' One three-syllable word.

  Don Helms

  Song, Writing, Heart

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• Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit.

  Damon Galgut

  Measurement, Language, Moments

  Damon Galgut (2011). “The Impostor”, p.36, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• MONOSYLLABIC, adj. Composed of words of one syllable . . . Commonly Saxon - that is to say, words of a barbarous people destitute of ideas and incapable of any but the most elementary sentiments and emotions.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Ideas, People, Emotion

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.166, University of Georgia Press

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• To catch the real meaning of the Spirit of Christmas, we need only drop the last syllable, and it becomes the Spirit of Christ.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Real, Needs, Lasts

  Twitter post from Dec 15, 2015

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• Hegel's philosophy is so odd that one would not have expected him to be able to get sane men to accept it, but he did. He set it out with so much obscurity that people thought it must be profound. It can quite easily be expounded lucidly in words of one syllable, but then its absurdity becomes obvious.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Men, People

  Bertrand Russell, John G. Slater, Peter Köllner (1997). “Last Philosophical Testament: 1943-68”, p.396, Psychology Press

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• This is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word.

  T. S. Eliot

  Feelings, Levels, Conscious

  T. S. Eliot (1986). “The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relation of Criticism to Poetry in England”, p.111, Harvard University Press

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• Upon the lips of babes asleep I saw light embracing light and so allowed my syllables to rest there as a prayer they might sing in their dreams.

  Aberjhani

  Dream, Prayer, Light

  Aberjhani (2012). “Visions of a Skylark Dresed in Black (HB Gift Edition)”, p.110, Lulu.com

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• out of great Russia came three
  dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die
  for: Bread, Peace, Land.

  Carl Sandburg

  Gun, Russia, Land

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.191, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

  Brain, Sound, Weight

  Emily Dickinson, Helen Vendler (2010). “Dickinson”, p.17, Harvard University Press

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• Celebrity chefs are the leaders in the field of food, and we are the led. Why should the leaders of chemical businesses be held responsible for polluting the marine environment with a few grams of effluent, which is sublethal to marine species, while celebrity chefs are turning out endangered fish at several dozen tables a night without enduring a syllable of criticism?

  Charles Clover

  Marine, Night, Sea

  Charles Clover (2008). “The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and what We Eat”, p.189, Univ of California Press

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• Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians -- lack of power to pronounce the syllable, "No." To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one's freedom and one's character.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Character, Mean, Men

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• For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next.

  Saint Augustine

  Writing, Giving, Zenith

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• Sweetheart, darling, dearest, it was funny to think that these endearments, which used to sound exceedingly sentimental in movies and books, now held great importance, simple but true verbal affirmations of how they felt for each other. They were words only the heart could hear and understand, words that could impart entire pentameter sonnets in their few, short syllables.

  E. A. Bucchianeri

  True Love, Book, Heart

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• I'm on fire when I'm singing, I'm completely in character, I use my sense memories, and every syllable of it is meant. It's a very special thing.

  Sinead O'Connor

  Memories, Character, Fire

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• On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I began, letting the story happen, just trying to stay out of the way.

  Ron Rash

  Character, Focus, Trying

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• Dogs should be called by names which are not very long, so that each may obey more quickly when he is called, but they should not have shorter names than those which are pronounced in two syllables.

  Columella

  Dog, Names, Two

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• Every syllable that can be struck out is pure profit, and every page that can be economised is a five-per-cent dividend. Nature rebels against this rule; the flesh is weak, and shrinks from the scissors; I groan in retrospect over the weak.

  Henry Adams

  Editing, Flesh, Pages

  Henry Adams, Ernest Samuels (1992). “Henry Adams, Selected Letters”, p.189, Harvard University Press

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• May and June. Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year: cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights. The discussion of philosophy is over; it's time for work to begin.

  H. Peter Loewer

  Morning, Philosophy, Spring

  H. Peter Loewer (1983). “Peter Loewer's Month by Month Garden Almanac for Indoor & Outdoor Gardening”

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• I'm from the South, and there's a different understanding of how to chop. There's a syllable play. It's a delicate art. Your accent has a lot to do with it. If you're from a certain area, words don't roll of your tongue as slick.

  Yelawolf

  Art, Play, Understanding

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