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  WORDS;

  THEIR USE AND ABUSE.


  BY

  WILLIAM MATHEWS, LL.D.,

  AUTHOR OF “GETTING ON IN THE WORLD,” “ORATORY AND ORATORS,”
  ETC., ETC.


  Die Sprache ist nichts anderes als der in die Erscheinung tretende
  Gedanke und beide sind innerlich nur eins und dasselbe.--BECKER.


  CHICAGO
  SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY
  1907




  COPYRIGHT, 1876,
  BY S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.


  COPYRIGHT, 1884,
  BY S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.




Language and thought are inseparable. Words without thought are
dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to
speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought
incarnate.--MAX MÜLLER.

A winged word hath struck ineradically in a million hearts, and
envenomed every hour throughout their hard pulsation. On a winged
word hath hung the destiny of nations. On a winged word hath human
wisdom been willing to cast the immortal soul, and to leave it
dependent for all its future happiness.--W. S. LANDOR.

Words are things; and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon
a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions,
think.--BYRON.

A dead language is full of all monumental remembrances of the
people who spoke it. Their swords and their shields are in it;
their faces are pictured on its walls; and their very voices ring
still through its recesses.--B. W. DWIGHT.

Every sentence of the great writer is like an autograph....
If Milton had endorsed a bill of exchange with half-a-dozen
blank-verse lines, it would be as good as his name, and would be
accepted as good evidence in court.--ALEXANDER SMITH.

If there be a human talent, let it get into the tongue, and make
melody with that organ. The talent that can say nothing for itself,
what is it? Nothing; or a thing that can do mere drudgeries, and at
best make money by railways.--CARLYLE.

Human language may be polite and powerless in itself, uplifted
with difficulty into expression by the high thoughts it utters, or
it may in itself become so saturated with warm life and delicious
association that every sentence shall palpitate and thrill with the
mere fascination of the syllables.--T. W. HIGGINSON.

Accustom yourself to reflect on the words you use, hear, or read,
their birth, derivation, and history. For if words are not things,
they are living powers, by which the things of most importance to
mankind are actuated, combined, and harmonized.--COLERIDGE.

Words possess an endless, indefinable, tantalizing charm. They
paint humanity in its thoughts, longings, aspirations, struggles,
failures--paint it upon a canvas of breath, in the colors of
life.--ANON.

Ye know not what hurt ye do to Learning, that care not for Words,
but for Matter, and so make a Divorce betwixt the Tongue and the
Heart.--ASCHAM.

Let him who would rightly understand the grandeur and dignity of
speech, meditate on the deep mystery involved in the revelation of
the Lord Jesus as the Word of God.--F. W. FARRAR.


      Words are lighter than the cloud foam
        Of the restless ocean spray;
      Vainer than the trembling shadow
        That the next hour steals away;
      By the fall of summer rain-drops
        Is the air as deeply stirred;
      And the rose leaf that we tread on
        Will outlive a word.

      Yet on the dull silence breaking
        With a lightning flash, a word,
      Bearing endless desolation
        On its blighting wings, I heard.
      Earth can forge no keener weapon,
        Dealing surer death and pain,
      And the cruel echo answered
        Through long years again.

      I have known one word hang star-like
        O’er a dreary waste of years,
      And it only shone the brighter