Syllables Quotes - Page 6

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• [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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• No worries, Atticus. I will snarf surreptitiously. And I should get bacon, because my adverb was two syllables longer than yours, plus a bonus for alliteration." I grinned. "It's a deal. You're the best hound ever.

  Kevin Hearne

  Two, Worry, Bonus

  Kevin Hearne (2014). “The Iron Druid Chronicles 6-Book Bundle: Hounded, Hexed, Hammered, Tricked, Trapped, Hunted”, p.911, Del Rey

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• When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Past, Silence, Firsts

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “Map: Collected and Last Poems”, p.328, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.

  Carl Sandburg

  Life, Animal, Air

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• You're from where?" "Lay'en. It's near Salt Lake City." "Spell that for me." "Um, that would be S-A-L-T-" "No, the other one. The city you're from." "Oh. L-A-Y-T-O-N." "Ah-Lay-ton." That's what I said." "No you didn't. You just said, 'Lay'en.'" "So I did. But just go ahead and pronounce 'aluminum' for me, Mr. British Man. How are you going to defend that piece of insanity? Why don't you spell it and count syllables and see if your al-um-in-ium makes sense whatsoever?" He bowed his head. "Touch...

  Shannon Hale

  Men, Lakes, Cities

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• Stories heard but not recalled. Letters too. Words filling my head. Fragmenting like artillery shells. Shrapnel, like syllables, flying everywhere. Terrible syllables. Sharp cracked. Traveling at murderous speed. Tearing through it all in a very, very bad inreparable way.

  Mark Z. Danielewski

  Flying, Stories, Shells

  Mark Z. Danielewski (2000). “Mark Z. Danielewski's House of leaves”

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• I like 'pencil-necked weasel'. It has 'pencil' in it. Pencils are good things. You can draw or write things with pencils. I think it's what you call someone when you're worried that using a long word like 'intellectual' may have too many syllables. It's not something that people who have serious, important things to say call other people.

  Neil Gaiman

  Writing, Thinking, Long

  "Neil Gaiman hits back at US politician's theft accusation" by Alison Flood, www.theguardian.com. May 5, 2011.

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• I find my voice and manage to say those three one-syllable words back to him. Words I haven't uttered in a very, very long time. Words that meant nothing before now.

  Emily Giffin

  Voice, Long, Three

  Emily Giffin (2010). “Something Borrowed: A Novel”, p.174, Macmillan

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• Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator’s mother carries her child up the stairs and the reader follows, for days. But World War I passes in a paragraph. I needed 125 pages to get from Labor Day to Christmas vacation. In six more words, here’s spring.

  Richard Powers

  Mother, Children, Spring

  Richard Powers (2009). “Generosity: An Enhancement”, p.166, Macmillan

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• Egypt loved the lotus becuase it never dies. It is the same for people who are loved. Thus can something as insignificant as a name-two syllables, one high, one sweet- summon up the innumerable smiles, tears, sighs and dreams of a human life.

  Anita Diament

  Dream, Sweet, Egypt

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• But in love each moment is magnified, and every gesture, word and syllable is examined like a speech by the President.

  Hanif Kureishi

  President, Gestures, Speech

  Hanif Kureishi (2016). “Love in a Blue Time”, p.93, Faber & Faber

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• His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn't even know that guys could turn me on-not, like, in real life

  John Green

  Real, Guy, Kind

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.19, Penguin

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• In conversation you can use timing, a look, an inflection. But on the page all you have is commas, dashes, the amount of syllables in a word. When I write, I read everything out loud to get the right rhythm.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Writing, Use, Pages

  FaceBook post by Fran Lebowitz from Jul 06, 2010

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• I discover poetry when I was in elementary school and I was so fascinated by it. Because I realised if you get the right amount of syllables and the right amount of words, in the right rhyme scheme and you put it all together. You make words just bounce of a page.

  Taylor Swift

  School, Together, Pages

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• The key to all knowledge comes in words of just one syllable, apparently.... There's only the last page left to write on. I'll fill it with words of just one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

  Dodie Smith

  Writing, Keys, Pages

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• I want to see the thirst inside the syllables I want to touch the fire in the sound: I want to feel the darkness of the cry. I want words as rough as virgin rocks.” - Verb.

  Pablo Neruda

  Fire, Rocks, Darkness

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• Sitting over words
  Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
  Not far
  Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
  The echo of everything that has ever
  Been spoken
  Still spinning its one syllable
  Between the earth and silence.

  W. S. Merwin

  Dark, Night, Echoes

  "Utterance". Poem by W. S. Merwin, gladdestthing.com.

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• A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable.

  Don DeLillo

  Fall, Persons

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Cosmopolis”, p.13, Pan Macmillan

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