Inability To Speak Quotes

Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that's what I've had to make the best of. ~ Samuel Beckett

There's an impotency Viagra can't touch - the inability of a man to speak ... ~ John Geddes

She stands behind the reception desk, dwarfed and age speckled as a winter starling, perhaps ninety years old, and chattering, chattering away, as if a cure for his inability to speak Japanese were the application of more Japanese (a hair-of-the-dog sensibility). And yet some how, from his months of travel and pantomime, his pathetic journey into empathic and telepathic, he feels he does understand. ~ Andrew Sean Greer

Women like this exploited a person's natural civility, marching through the gaps left by a inability to speak the naked truth. ~ Rebecca Tope

Over the years I've come to appreciate how animals enter our lives prepared to teach and far from being burdened by an inability to speak they have many different ways to communicate. It is up to us to listen more than hear, to look into more than past. ~ Nick Trout

No one seems to have learned, or can remember, the magic words that calm people when they are frightened or threatened: "I'm sorry; I didn't see you; are you all right?" The inability to speak these words, I observe, goes right along with a propensity for mindless insults. ~ Carol Tavris

Eleanor had followed Richard, marveling, as always, at the male inability to speak the language of the heart. "One day I hope to understand why men see sentiment as the ultimate enemy," she said dryly, "but I'll not be holding my breath until it happens. ~ Sharon Kay Penman

To be sure, the judges were right when they finally told the accused that all he had said was 'empty talk'--except that they thought the emptiness was feigned, and that the accused wished to cover up other thoughts which, though hideous, were not empty. This supposition seems refuted by the striking consistency with which Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, repeated word for word the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés [ ] each time he referred to an incident or event of importance to him. Whether writing his memoirs in Argentina or in Jerusalem, whether speaking to the police examiner or to the court, what he said was always the same, expressed in the same words. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such. ~ Hannah Arendt

If I have any expertise, it is in the realm of spiritual darkness: fear of the unknown, familiarity with divine absence, mistrust of conventional wisdom, suspicion of religious comforters, keen awareness of the limits of all language about God and at the same time shame over my inability to speak of God without a thousand qualifiers, doubt about the health of my soul, and barely suppressed contempt for those who have no such qualms. These are the areas of my proficiency. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

How often must you be betrayed before you see that others are taking your kindness for weakness, your silence for an inability to speak? ~ Jeff Mach

The ability to speak well is the shortcut to distinction. ~ Dale Carnegie

When one set of Jews labels another set of Jews 'anti-Semitic,' they are trying to monopolize the right to speak in the name of the Jews. So the allegation of anti-Semitism is actually a cover for an intra-Jewish quarrel. ~ Judith Butler

So Jason, in England, do you eat these 'Farmer burgers?'" Wong Tong asked.
"Farmer burgers? I don't know what they are?"
"Maybe I have the name wrong. I remember the name from the song," Wong Tong explained.
"What song?" Jason asked.
"You know the 'E, I, E, I, O' song."
'E, I, E, I, O' song?
Jason started to roar with laughter. He tried to speak but was laughing, much to the annoyance of Wong Tong. He held his chest, laughing still hurt his ribs.
"You mean the 'Old Macdonald had a farm' song. You mean Macdonald's burgers," he said, laughing. "Yes, I have had them. They're good. ~ Mark A. Cooper

Congressmember Weiner has shown just a pattern of reckless behavior, an inability to tell the truth, and what New Yorkers deserve is a mayor with a record of delivering for them, of vision, and a level of maturity and responsibility. ~ Christine Quinn

My music was my life, and it played a large part in my inability to sustain relationships. ~ Kenny Rogers

So there you have it: hearing voices at sea is not a pathological condition. It's quite normal. Welcome to the world of illusions at sea. Of mirages, looming, towering, stooping and sinking. Of moons that change size, suns that change shape, horizons that bend, lights that change colour, and sounds that play hide and seek. Of waves that speak, ships that effervesce and whales that turn into baby elephants. For the sea has a lobsterpot full of tricks and illusions to confuse and beguile even the most rational 21st century sailor. ~ Nic Compton

McMullen came out of Japan racked by nightmares and so nervous that he was barely able to speak cogently. When he told his story to his family, his father accused him of lying and forbade him to speak of the war. Shattered and deeply depressed, McMullen couldn't eat, and his weight plunged back down to ninety pounds. He went to a veterans' hospital, but the doctors simply gave him B12 shots. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

You think I need to be loved calmly and carefully," she says slowly.
I nod, sucking my piercing into my mouth to toy with it.
"You want to know what I think?" she asks.
"What?" I grunt. Apparently, I've turned into a caveman who can only speak in monosyllables.
"I think I need to be loved… completely. ~ Tammy Falkner

To become a WRITER I had to learn to INTERRUPT, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL. ~ Deborah Levy

Over time even two armed blind men in a room can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

Curmudgeons speak up because they have to, because it's become critically important for them to tell the truth as they see it. Telling the truth is as natural to them once more as it was when they were children. The fact that no one cares to listen is inconsequential. Curmudgeons speak up, raise their voices, stand for something too right to be silent about anymore, whatever the cost, despite a world that deals with what it doesn't want to hear by crucifying the messenger.

Increasingly these days, they're being called by another name: whistleblower. ~ Lionel Fisher

Oh, you wretches who feel all this, who, even as I,
cannot allow yourselves to speak of man's being
here for a purpose, who, even as I, are so utterly
in the clutch of the Nothing that governs us, so
profoundly aware that we are born for nothing,
that we love a nothing, believe in nothing, work
ourselves to death for nothing only that little by
little we may pass over into nothing – how can I
help it if your knees collapse when you think of it
seriously? Many a time have I, too, sunk into these
bottomless thoughts, and cried out: Why do you lay
the axe to my root, pitiless spirit? – and still I am
here. ~ Friedrich HölderlinHölderlin

Finally he steeled himself to read the final rule again. He had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie. It was an integral part of the learning of precise speech. Once, when he had been a Four, he had said, just prior to the midday meal at school, "I'm starving." Immediately he had been taken aside for a brief private lesson in language precision. He was not starving, it was pointed out. He was hungry. No one in the community was starving, had ever been starving, would ever be starving. To say "starving" was to speak a lie. An unintentioned lie, of course. But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered. Did he understand that? they asked him. And he had. ~ Lois Lowry

We have lost that which has made us great over the generations, and that is the sense of individual and personal responsibility that we can come up, we can pursue our dreams and our aspirations and we won't be blocked by government regulation, by the inability to get a loan as a small business to make our dreams come true. ~ Jon Huntsman, Jr.

The ceiling of languages is falling down. Either add to this rubble or shove at least some of it away.
Liberty, shit. The liberty to starve. The liberty to speak words to which no one listens. The liberty to get diseases no doctor treats or can cure. The liberty to live in conditions cockroaches wouldn't touch except to die in. The liberty to be an eighty-three-year-old Ukranian shuffling around in her slippers among the cat shit in the slum building hallway-'Is there a landlord here? Is there light anywhere? ~ Kathy Acker

She's not like anyone I've ever seen before. When I'm not with her, I want to be. And when she opens the book and I see her face, I can barely remember what I'm supposed to say, much less how to speak at all." I test the words on my tongue. "I think I might be in love with her. But how can I really know, since the only love I've ever experienced was written for me? ~ Jodi Picoult

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas. ~ Northrop Frye

She was in no humour for conversation with anyone but himself; and to him she had hardly courage to speak. ~ Jane Austen

I do not concern myself with my inability to feel such comfort amidst humans (other than with very few friends and family), but, rather, am simply thankful that at least dogs exist, and I'm humbly aware of how much less a person I'd be – how less a human – if they did not exist. ~ Rick Bass

Quite ironically, the answer to ineffective philanthropy is more of it: the failure of philanthropy is its own success. The perceived necessity - even the indispensability - of a donor like the Gates Foundation grows in proportion to its own inability to achieve the unachievable: mitigating the very inequalities that its own presence might be inadvertently compounding. ~ Linsey McGoey

During these times immediately ahead, the world will need many trumpets to sound the clarion call. The world will need many voices to speak the words of truth and healing for which millions long. The world will need many hearts joined together in the work of the soul, and prepared to do the work of God. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

I was taken by William Burroughs' presence and intelligence from the first time I was introduced to him, by Lester Bangs in 1975. He was thrilling to listen to. When you heard him speak, you felt that you were privy to such a rare mind. Even in small-talk, he spoke with perfect economy of language. His shoots with me were very collaborative and it was an incredible opportunity to be able to photograph him over the course of twenty years. ~ Kate Simon

No". Tyrion's voice was hoarse. "Sansa is no longer yours to torment. Understand that, monster."
Joffrey sneered. "You're the monster, Uncle"
"Am I?" Tyrion cocked his head. "Perhaps you should speak more softly to me, then. Monsters are dangerous beasts, and just now kinds seem to be dying like flies. ~ George R R Martin

We should all speak like sirens. Use our voices to make a difference, because all of them matter. ~ Bethany C. Morrow

I grow tired of your mouth." Bones shifted under Curran's skin. The nose widened, the jaws grew, the top lip split, displaying enormous teeth. I was staring into the face of a nightmare, a horrible meld of human and lion. If a thing that weighed over six hundred pounds in beast-form could be called a lion. His eyes never changed. The rest of him - the body, the arms, the legs, even his hair and skin remained human. The shapeshifters had three forms: beast, human, and half. They could shift into any of the three, but they always changed shape completely. Most had to strain to maintain the half-form and to be able to speak in it was a great achievement. Only Curran could do this: turn part of his body into one shape while keeping the rest in another.
Normally, I had no trouble with Curran's face in half-form. It was well-proportioned, even - many shapeshifters suffered the "my jaws are way too big and don't fit together" syndrome - but I was used to that half-form face being sheathed in gray fur. Having human skin stretched over it was nausea inducing.
He noticed my heroic efforts not to barf. "What is it now?"
I waved my hand around my face. "Fur."
"What do you mean?"
"Your face has no fur."
Curran touched his chin. And just like that all traces of the beast vanished. He sat before me fully human.
He massaged his jaw.
The beast grew stronger during the flare. Curran's irritation caused his control to slip just a hair.
"Having techn ~ Ilona Andrews

I'm not entitled to have an opinion unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people who are in opposition. I think that I am qualified to speak only when I've reached that state. ~ Charlie Munger

My whole life, when I was growing up, not one race has ever accepted me, ... So I never felt connected or attached to any race specifically. I had a very American upbringing, I feel American, and I don't speak Spanish. So, to say that I'm a Latin actress, OK, but it's not fitting; it would be insincere. ~ Jessica Alba

The standards for defining the existence of emotions in animals begin with those in common use for humans. One should demand no more proof that an animal feels an emotion than would be demanded of a human - and, like humans, the animal should be permitted to speak its own emotional language, which it is up to the beholder to understand. ~ Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

To hear a radical change of perspective is to hear a kingdom minded man speak ~ Sunday Adelaja

Valyrian is oddly easier than Dothraki. It's got a more lyrical flow to it that feels more familiar to the way I speak. That makes it slightly easier. ~ Emilia Clarke

I'm worried I will leave grad school and no longer be able to speak English. I know this woman in grad school, a friend of a friend, and just listening to her talk is scary. The semiotic dialetics of intertextual modernity. Which makes no sense at all. Sometimes I feel that they live in a parallel universe of academia speaking acadamese instead of English and they don't really know what's happening in the real world. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

What is beautifull about being a
Motivational speaker is that you get to
teach each and everyone how to be
wise,get wise,see wise,believe wise
and speak wisely. ~ G.F Mpolweni

To speak of "mere words" is much like speaking of "mere dynamite. ~ C.J. Ducasse

The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense of a popular phrase) all moonshine; for it is light without heat, and it is secondary light, reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks were right when they made Apollo the god both of imagination and of sanity; for he was both the patron of poetry and the patron of healing. Of necessary dogmas and a special creed I shall speak later. But that transcendentalism by which all men live has primarily much the position of the sun in the sky. We are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid confusion; it is something both shining and shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is utterly reasonable; and the moon is the mother of lunatics and has given to them all her name. ~ G.K. Chesterton

And back in the spring of 1720, Sir Isaac Newton owned shares in the South Sea Company, the hottest stock in England. Sensing that the market was getting out of hand, the great physicist muttered that he "could calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people." Newton dumped his South Sea shares, pocketing a 100% profit totaling £7,000. But just months later, swept up in the wild enthusiasm of the market, Newton jumped back in at a much higher price - and lost £20,000 (or more than $3 million in today's money). For the rest of his life, he forbade anyone to speak the words "South Sea" in his presence. 4 ~ Benjamin Graham

Men sometimes speak as if humility and meekness would rob us of what is noble and bold and manlike. O that all would believe that this is the nobility of the kingdom of heaven, that this is the royal spirit that the King of heaven displayed, that this is Godlike, to humble oneself, to become the servant of all! ~ Andrew Murray

When someone speaks he looks at a mouth, not eyes and their colors, which, it seems to him, will always alter depending on the light of a room, the minute of the day. Mouths reveal insecurity or smugness or any other point on the spectrum of character. For him they are the most intricate aspect of faces. He's never sure what an eye reveals. but he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. One can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of sunlight. ~ Michael Ondaatje

When we speak of ancient times, Rud Elalle, we find in our words things far nearer to hand, and all those emotions we imagined new, blazing with our youth, we find to be ancient beyond imagining. ~ Steven Erikson

STAY AN ORIGINAL WORK OF ART

In this short lifetime,
Why not be --
True to your own voice,
Your own story,
Your own truths,
Your own style,
Beat and drum --
Instead of reflect the words,
Songs and march of another?
Why not use your soul's own
Unique language,
Instead of constantly try to toot something
Not true, suitable or intended
For your own instrument,
Painting,
Song,
Or story?

Why create an image you cannot produce?
And if you can create a brilliant mask,
How long will you really be able to hide your true soul
Behind it
Until its colors and plastic
Begin to fade and melt with
Time?

Do not speak about truth when there is no truth in you.
Do not speak about being yourself when you are trying hard to be someone else.
Do not keep crying about your pain when you you have no shame creating pain in others.
Do not step on truth, or someone else's truth, or someone who fights for truth --
And think there will be no repercussions;
For there is more danger in silence,
And for every action there will always be a reaction
Of opposite or equal measure.

Treasure integrity,
Treasure your own story and truths.
How will people remember you when you want to be an imitation?
How will people remember your voice when you want to sound like another?
Be so different that everybody will re ~ Suzy Kassem

Is it not possible to look beyond the canes, the wheelchairs, the braces, and the crutches into the hearts of the people who have need of these aids? They are human beings and want only to be treated as ordinary people. They may appear different, move awkwardly, and speak haltingly, but they have the same feelings ... They want to be loved for what they are inside, without any prejudice for their impairment. Can there not be more tolerance for differences-differences in capacity, differences in body and in mind? ~ James E. Faust

It occurred to him that she had spent these last few years entirely among men, seeing no women apart from a few like Louisa Wogan; she spoke rather as men, and somewhat raffish, moneyed, loose-living men, speak when they are alone together. 'She has forgotten the distinction between what can and what cannot be said,' he reflected. 'A few more years of this company, and she would not scruple to fart. ~ Patrick O'Brian

When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not fall in meekly behind them. We who protest ... are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress. ~ Howard Zinn