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1 " [M]ay not literature (and, in particular, fiction) be considered a desperate and permanently thwarted effort to produce a unique form of expression? Something like a cry, perhaps, a cry that, somehow, inexplicably contains all the millions of words that have ever existed, anywhere, in any age. In contrast with the spoken word and its classifying function, the purpose of writing seems, rather, to be a quest for the egg, the seed, nothing more. "
― J.M.G. Le Clézio , The Book of Flights
2 " The written word imparts a gravitas the spoken word lacks. The underlying assumption is that time and thought has been expended on what was written, even if that is not the case. "
― , UnSend: Email, text, and social media disasters...and how to avoid them
3 " Our view of man will remain superficial so long as we fail to go back to that origin [of silence], so long as we fail to find, beneath the chatter of words, the primordial silence, and as long as we do not describe the action which breaks this silence. the spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world. "
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty , Phenomenology of Perception
4 " It is time to put down the pen; time to clear the throat. Speaking is a different thing altogether from writing. The spoken word has different properties, and different powers. If I have learned anything from writing down my own tale, it is this. "
― Dexter Palmer , The Dream of Perpetual Motion
5 " The spoken word has come to dominate many Protestant forms of worship: the words of prayers, responsive readings, Scripture, the sermon, and so forth. Yet the spoken word is perhaps the least effective way of reaching the heart; one must constantly pay attention with one’s mind. The spoken word tends to go to our heads, not our hearts. "
― Marcus J. Borg , The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith
6 " Though sincerity is a word which rings its meaning in the mind when it is mentioned, its real meaning in real sense is neither the meaning we imagine nor the spoken word but in action. Yes, it is action that determines what sincere means in reality. Real action that stands the test of time does not only give a true meaning to the word sincere in our mind and mind’s eye but it also creates a real picture of who a real sincere person is in our minds and mind’s eye. "
7 " What said those two souls communicating through the language of the eyes, more perfect than that of the lips, the language given to the soul in order that sound may not mar the ecstasy of feeling? In such moments, when the thoughts of two happy beings penetrate into each other’s souls through the eyes, the spoken word is halting, rude, and weak—it is as the harsh, slow roar of the thunder compared with the rapidity of the dazzling lightning flash, expressing feelings already recognized, ideas already understood, and if words are made use of it is only because the heart’s desire, dominating all the being and flooding it with happiness, wills that the whole human organism with all its physical and psychical powers give expression to the song of joy that rolls through the soul. To the questioning glance of love, as it flashes out and then conceals itself, speech has no reply; the smile, the kiss, the sigh answer. "
― José Rizal , Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not) (Noli Me Tángere, #1)
8 " Poets are Prisoners8-29-2015Poets are prisonersPractitioners, commissioners &conditioners of the spoken word Caged by their own mindsWords are shackles "
― Debbie Tosun Kilday
9 " Even the pool of ink could be dried out and writing papers could be burnt to ashes forever but the spoken word will never die so as the editor. "
― Euginia Herlihy
10 " The intellectually-inclined biographers stray from the point that the message is directed through the spoken word at the broad masses and not writing to an inbred, self-adoring intellectual e "
11 " If intelligence is the triumph of life, the spoken word is the marvellous means by which this intelligence is manifested. "
