God transforms, so to speak, this air into words, into various sounds. He makes you understand these various sounds through the modifications by which you are affected.
Words
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; – poetry = the best words in the best order.
Hush! Check those words. Do not cure ill with ill and make your pain still heavier than it is.
Don’t you know this, that words are doctors to a diseased temperment?
Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.
In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature.
All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.
Word books traditionally focus on unusual and quirky items. They tend to ignore the words that provide the skeleton of the language, without which it would fall apart, such as ‘and’ and ‘what,’ or words that provide structure to our conversation, such as ‘hello.’
The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it’s impossible to make something out of words and not communicate.
I had problems getting my words out. If people spoke directly to me, I understood what they said. But when the grownups got to yakking really fast by themselves, it just sounded like ‘oi oi.’ I thought grownups had a separate language. I’ve now figured out I was not hearing the hard consonant sounds.