Syllables Quotes

Over your breasts of motionless current,
over your legs of firmness and water,
over the permanence and the pride
of your naked hair
I want to be, my love, now that the tears are
thrown
into the raucous baskets where they accumulate,
I want to be, my love, alone with a syllable
of mangled silver, alone with a tip
of your breast of snow. ~ Pablo Neruda

Their constant outward-looking, their mania for radios, cars, and a thousand other trinkets made them dream and fix their eyes upon the trash of life, made it impossible for them to learn a language which could have taught them to speak of what was in their or others' hearts. The words of their souls were the syllables of popular songs. ~ Richard Wright

Without anyone to talk to, a person is not quite real. Sounds are very important - we are like bats tapping at each other with sounds, making sure there is someone there, groping along. Sounds. Syllables. The beat of music. It is all a curious flowing, which you can hear only when you are silent yourself. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

Reading in the third millennium B.C. may therefore have been a matter of hearing the cuneiform, that is, hallucinating the speech from looking at its picture symbols, rather than visual reading of syllables in our sense. ~ Julian Jaynes

Utilize A noxious puff-word. Since it does nothing that good old use doesn't do, its extra letters and syllables don't make a writer seem smarter; rather, using utilize makes you seem either like a pompous twit or like someone so insecure that she'll use pointlessly big words in an attempt to look sophisticated. The same is true for the noun utilization, for vehicle as used for car, for residence as used for house, for presently, at present, at this time, and at the present time as used for now, and so on. What's worth remembering about puff-words is something that good writing teachers spend a lot of time drumming into undergrads: "formal writing" does not mean gratuitously fancy writing; it means clean, clear, maximally considerate writing. ~ David Foster Wallace

We are angered even by the full acceptance of our humiliating confessions - how much more by hearing in hard distinct syllables from the lips of a near observer, those confused murmurs which we try to call morbid, and strive against as if they were the oncoming of numbness! ~ George Eliot

Bob Marley says it too but he says every little thing gonna be all right and that strikes me as an appropriate qualifier even if all he was doing was getting enough syllables to match the music. ~ Miriam Toews

If words could build a bridge In the dimension where you belong I would bind the syllables to see your smile again. ~ Jayson Zabate

Just as little as a reader today reads all of the individual words (let alone syllables) on a page - rather he picks about five words at random out of twenty and "guesses" at the meaning that probably belongs to these five words - just as little do we see a tree exactly and completely with reference to leaves, twigs, color, and form; it is so very much easier for us to simply improvise some approximation of a tree. Even in the midst of the strangest experiences we will still do the same: we make up the major part of the experience and can scarcely be forced not to contemplate some event as its "inventors." All this means: basically and from time immemorial we are - accustomed to lying. Or to put it more virtuously and hypocritically, in short, more pleasantly: one is much more of an artist than one knows. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Shelby looked over to see Andrew silently mouthing syllables to himself, as if he were part of an ecstatic rite. He grinned as he bit fricatives and tongued plosives. He was tasting English origins, mulling over words ripped from bronze-smelling hoards. Words that had slept beneath centuries of dust and small rain, sharp and bright as scale mail. Poetry had never moved her quite so much as drama. She loved the shock of colloquy, the beat and treble of words doing what they had to on stage. Andrew preferred the echo of poems buried alive. ~ Bailey Cunningham

And if I could talk to you all day I would
I'd cling onto your words, syllables, breaths
and I would neatly pack them away into my pocket
just to listen to you speak over and over again
when it's 3am and I am sad and tired
and my heart is aching for the lullaby
that is your voice. ~ Natalija Snjegota

Sometimes I just start humming something, find a melody I like a lot, and if it sticks around for a couple days, a few words will lock themselves into place. I might just get the first line. Then words just keep falling into the syllables. The choruses kind of write themselves and verses I have to work at a little bit. ~ Jack Johnson

November arrives in Northern Maine on a cold wind from Canada that knives unfiltered through the thinnest forest, drapes snow along the river banks and over the slope of hills. It's lonely up here, not just in fall and winter but all the time; the weather is gray and hard and the spaces are long and hard, and that north wind blows through every space unmercifully, rattling the syllables out of your sentences sometimes. ~ Gerard Donovan

As some to church repair, not for the doctrine, but the music there. ~ Alexander Pope

If man were relieved of all superstition, and all prejudice, and had replaced these with a keen sensitivity to his real environment, and moreover had achieved a level of communication so simplified that one syllable could express his every thought, then he would have achieved the level of intelligence already achieved by his dog. ~ Robert Breault

Words so easily and yet unfortunately uttered by many, be it to express their appreciation of fried bits of potatoes to sports teams on the television. Words offered so frivolously about a variety of subjects and yet can be the most difficult, most painful, most meaningful, most cherished syllables we gift another person. ~ Heather Lyons

Antananarivo is pronounced Tananarive, and for much of this century has been spelt that way as well. When the French took over Madagascar at the end of the last century (colonised is probably too kind a word for moving in on a country that was doing perfectly well for itself but which the French simply took a fancy to), they were impatient with the curious Malagasy habit of not bothering to pronounce the first and last syllables of place names. They decided, in their rational Gallic way, that if that was how the names were pronounced then they could damn well be spelt that way too. It would be rather as if someone had taken over England and told us that from now on we would be spelling Leicester 'Lester' and liking it. We might be forced to spell it that way, but we wouldn't like it, and neither did the Malagasy. As soon as they managed to divest themselves of French rule, in 1960, they promptly reinstated all the old spellings and just kept the cooking and the bureaucracy. ~ Douglas Adams

It normally happens that if you put two words together, or two syllables together, one of them will attract more weight, more emphasis, than the other. In other words, most so-called spondees can be read as either iambs or trochees. ~ James Fenton

In my opinion, it is easier to avoid iambic rhythms, when writing in syllabics, if you create a line or pattern of lines using odd numbers of syllables. ~ James Fenton

I was going to be in therapy for a long, long time. I wasn't even a sentence yet. But I had some syllables, some new sounds. The first halves of the sentences I was accumulating were solid. I trusted them. ~ Heather Sellers

One late winter afternoon in Oxford Street, amid the noise of vehicles and voices that filled that dusky thoroughfare, as I was borne onward with the crowd past the great electric-lighted shops, a holy Indifference filled my thoughts. Illusion had faded from me; I was not touched by any desire for the goods displayed in those golden windows, nor had I the smallest share in the appetites and fears of all those moving and anxious faces. And as I listened with Asiatic detachment to the London traffic, its sound changed into something ancient and dissonant and sad - into the turbid flow of that stream of Craving which sweeps men onward through the meaningless cycles of Existence, blind and enslaved forever. But I had reached the farther shore, the Harbour of Deliverance, the Holy City; the Great Peace beyond all this turmoil and fret compassed me around. Om Mani padme hum - I murmured the sacred syllables, smiling with the pitying smile of the Enlightened One on his heavenly lotus.
Then, in a shop-window, I saw a neatly fitted suit-case. I liked that suit-case; I desired to possess it. Immediately I was enveloped by the mists of Illusion, chained once more to the Wheel of Existence, whirled onward along Oxford Street in that turbid stream of wrong-belief, and lust, and sorrow, and anger. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith

Fire and water and smoke and incense and chanting and bells and butter and blood: this was a language whose syllables were translated into physical terms; a language of the elements. It was a language that he hoped might speak to him one day. ~ Damon Galgut

I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company. ~ Gaston Bachelard

He stood there unsteady in the cold, mumbling syllables which almost resolved into her name, as though he could recall, and summon back, a time before death entered the world, before accident, before magic, and before magic despaired, to become religion. ~ William Gaddis

What's your name?'

She planted one elbow on the stretch of counter Zuri had wiped so she could lean closer and draw out both syllables. 'Savine.'

'That's a lovely name.'

'Oh, if you enjoy the tip, you'll go mad for the whole thing.'

'That so?' he purred at her. 'How does it go?'

'Savine… dan…' And she leaned even closer to deliver the punchline. 'Glokta.'

If a name had been a knife and she had cut his throat with hers, the blood could not have drained more quickly from his face. He gave a strangled cough, took a step back and nearly fell over one of his own barrels. ~ Joe Abercrombie

Proper praying is like a person who wanders through a field gathering flowers-one by one, until they make a beautiful bouquet. In the same manner, a person must gather each letter, each syllable, to form them into words of prayer. ~ Nachman Of Breslov

I too am relieved. I did not know if Kate would like me."
"Well, sure she would! You're her own kind, right?"
"I am her kind?"
Richard suddenly looked less sure of himself, but he said, "I mean you're in that same milieu or whatever. That science milieu she was raised in. Right, Uncle Louis?" he asked. "No normal person could understand you people."
"What exactly do you find difficult to understand?" Dr. Battista asked him.
"Oh, you know, all that science jargon; I can't offhand - "
"I am researching autoimmune disorders," Dr. Battista said. "It's true that 'autoimmune' has four syllables, but perhaps if I broke the word down for you… ~ Anne Tyler

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

I want to see thirst In the syllables, Tough fire In the sound; Feel through the dark For the scream. ~ Pablo Neruda

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off. ~ Sylvia Plath

Why are there five syllables in the word "monosyllabic"? ~ Steven Wright

May and June. Soft syllables, gentle names for the two best months in the garden year: cool, misty mornings gently burned away with a warming spring sun, followed by breezy afternoons and chilly nights. The discussion of philosophy is over; it's time for work to begin. ~ H. Peter Loewer

Oh contraire, mon frère. I'm able to annoy all adults in ten syllables or less. Sometimes, I don't even have to speak at all. I just walk into the room and it rankles them. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

When you're expecting bad news you have to be prepared for it a long time ahead so that when the telegram comes you can already pronounce the syllables in your mouth before opening it. ~ Robert Pinget

Will cries out, low, a murmur of blue and green and gold. The syllables of my name float between us. I've never seen my name that way, in those colors, not from any other voice. ~ Megan Hart

Well we really meant you to visit Paris in May, but the rhythm required two syllables. ~ Vernon Duke

Lecktrickery? grinned the fool boys, rubbing their rabbits' feet against the spell of these longest syllables in all Tarnation. ~ William T. Vollmann

Series of syllables which have been learned by heart, forgotten, and learned anew must be similar as to their inner conditions at the times when they can be recited. ~ Hermann Ebbinghaus

I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables. ~ William Shakespeare

(There is always another country and always another place.
There is always another name and another face.
And the name and the face are you, and you
The name and the face, and the stream you gaze into
Will show the adoring face, show the lips that lift to you
As you lean with the implacable thirst of self,
As you lean to the image which is yourself,
To set the lip to lip, fix eye on bulging eye,
To drink not of the stream but of your deep identity,
But water is water and it flows,
Under the image on the water the water coils and goes
And its own beginning and its end only the water knows.

There are many countries and the rivers in them
-Cumberland, Tennessee, Ohio, Colorado, Pecos, Little Big Horn,
And Roll, Missouri, roll.
But there is only water in them.

And in the new country and in the new, place
The eyes of the new friend will reflect the new face
And his mouth will speak to frame
The syllables of the new name
And the name is you and is the agitation of the air
And is the wind and the wind runs and the wind is everywhere.

The name and the face are you.
And they are you.
Are new.

For they have been dipped in the healing flood.
For they have been dipped in the redeeming blood.
For they have been dipped in Time
And Time is only beginnings
Time is only and always beginnings
And is the redemption of our c ~ Robert Penn Warren

Ah, love, this is fear. This is fear and syllables
and the beginnings of beauty. ~ Robert Hass

Every good gospel singer you can hear is a scat singer; they're just using different syllables. There are a lot of jazz singers out there, and more coming out of the churches. ~ Al Jarreau

Culture is a vulture but there's also vulture culture and cultured vultures and cultured yougurt (cherry, peach, pear, pineapple, grape, vanilla, plain, cherry vanilla, pineapple orage, cranberry, orange, mandarin orange, coffee, apricot, raspberry, blueberry, boysenberry, prune). And speaking of vulture culture there's counter-culture and under-the-counter culture, too. But whether you call it kulchur with a k and a ch and without the e it's still the same thing and you can't disguise it with pretty frills and a gallon of dog sweat. It still has two syllables and TWO-SYLLABLE WORDS SUCK so you can just forgetit, man. It's no fun at all and even fun wouldn't be fun if it was called funjure or funion or funching. But somehow fucking is still loads of fun even though there's that extra 3-letter cluster of vowels and consonants. Proof positive that there are exceptions everywhere you look. But don't look too hard, you might get eyestrain. ~ Richard Meltzer

People are not meant to be alone, as the word itself is made of two syllables. ~ Kimberlee Colon

Yet the stones remain less real to those who cannot name them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember. ~ Dana Gioia

He looks up.
Our eyes lock,and he breaks into a slow smile. My heart beats faster and faster. Almost there.He sets down his book and stands.And then this-the moment he calls my name-is the real moment everything changes.
He is no longer St. Clair, everyone's pal, everyone's friend.
He is Etienne. Etienne,like the night we met. He is Etienne,he is my friend.
He is so much more.
Etienne.My feet trip in three syllables. E-ti-enne. E-ti-enne, E-ti-enne. His name coats my tongue like melting chocolate. He is so beautiful, so perfect.
My throat catches as he opens his arms and wraps me in a hug.My heart pounds furiously,and I'm embarrassed,because I know he feels it. We break apart, and I stagger backward. He catches me before I fall down the stairs.
"Whoa," he says. But I don't think he means me falling.
I blush and blame it on clumsiness. "Yeesh,that could've been bad."
Phew.A steady voice.
He looks dazed. "Are you all right?"
I realize his hands are still on my shoulders,and my entire body stiffens underneath his touch. "Yeah.Great. Super!"
"Hey,Anna. How was your break?"
John.I forget he was here.Etienne lets go of me carefully as I acknowledge Josh,but the whole time we're chatting, I wish he'd return to drawing and leave us alone. After a minute, he glances behind me-to where Etienne is standing-and gets a funny expression on hs face. His speech trails off,and he buries his nose in his sketchbook. I look back, b ~ Stephanie Perkins

Language is not the lowborn, gawky servant of thought and feeling; it is need, thought, feeling, and perception itself. The shape of sentences, the song in its syllables, the rhythm of its movement, is the movement of the imagination. ~ William H Gass

I set my words carefully upon the page; they have taken time to prove, to ripen and mature.
I look and listen to their cadence, shape and syllables.
Like bread and cheese and wine, I lay them out for you ~ Liz Minister

As I stepped onto the gloomy landing a word formed in my mind: two syllables, starts with a V and rhymes with dire. I froze in place. Nightingale said that everything was true, after a fashion, and that had to include vampires, didn't it? I doubted they were anything like they were in books and on TV, and one thing was for certain - they absolutely weren't going to sparkle in the sunlight. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

Behind Communism, Fascism, behind all occupations and invasions lurks a more basic, pervasive evil, and that the image of that evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting syllables in unison. p. 100 ~ Milan Kundera

It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

VANNBRUGGHE. (Spitting upon the floor) But the bounds of the Mind are yet unknown: we form our Judgments too much on what has been done without knowing what might be done. Originals must soar into the region of Liberty.

DYER. And then fall down, since they have Wings made only of Wax. Why prostrate your Reason to meer Nature? We live off the Past: it is in our Words and our Syllables. It is reverberant in our Streets and Courts, so that we can scarce walk across the Stones without being reminded of those who walked there before us; the Ages before our own are like an Eclipse which blots out the Clocks and Watches of our present Artificers and, in that Darkness, the Generations jostle one another. It is the dark of Time from which we come and to which we will return.

VANNBRUGGHE. (Aside) What is this stuff about Time? (To Dyer) This is well said, but this Age of ours is quite new. The World was never more active or youthful than it is now, and all this Imitation of the past is but the Death's Head of Writing as it is of Architecture. ~ Peter Ackroyd

When they stopped to pick up Mike, Violet started to get out so she could climb in back with Chelsea, giving Mike's longer legs the front seat, but Jay reached out and caught her wrist.
"What are you doing? I want you to sit with me." His fingers moved to lace through hers as he drew her back inside. "Mike can sit in back."
Violet felt herself blush with satisfaction.
Mike came out of his house and jumped down the porch without ever touching the steps. Behind the darkened curtains, the television flickered.
"Here he comes!" Chelsea squealed, sounding like a little girl as she bounced up and down in the backseat, shaking the entire car. She clapped her hands with excitement.
Violet pulled her seat as far forward as she could to give Mike some extra room. He'd need it if he was going to be confined back there with Chelsea.
"Heeyyy, Mike." Chelsea managed to drawl the two words into several long syllables as Mike slid into the car. The syrupiness of it sounded so foreign oozing from Chelsea's mouth.
"Hey," Mike said back to her. One word, one syllable.
"So I guess it's just the four of us tonight," she purred.
"Really? I thought we were meeting a buncha people."
"Nope. Just us. Everyone else bailed."
Violet smiled to herself as she listened to Chelsea's account, amazed that her words came out sounding so…sincere.
But Violet knew better. And she realized from the look Jay flashed her that he knew too.
Mike, on the o ~ Kimberly Derting

Most people in America want an easy read. I call it McFiction - books which pass right through you without you even digesting them. I don't mean a book that has two-syllable words. I mean chapters you can read in a toilet break. Happy endings. We are more of a TV culture. ~ Jodi Picoult

I was scared and nearly choking when I bravely asked, 'Are you a pros-ti-tute?' I actually said it like that. I knew I was asking a question that might get me beaten up, and I had to force the three syllables to stumble off my tongue and bounce around innocently on the stainless-steel draining board while I waited for her reply. ~ Eskay Teel

Alayna I adored how he said my name, how it always felt like he was saying so much more with only those three syllables. Like a prayer, like a touchstone. It made me feel beautiful. ~ Laurelin Paige

He had been thinking of how landscape moulds a language. It was impossible to imagine these hills giving forth anything but the soft syllables of Irish, just as only certain forms of German could be spoken on the high crags of Europe; or Dutch in the muddy, guttural, phlegmish lowlands. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

We all received invitations, made by hand from construction paper, with balloons containing our names in Magic Marker. Our amazement at being formally invited to a house we had only visited in our bathroom fantasies was so great that we had to compare one another's invitations before we believed it. It was thrilling to know that the Lisbon girls knew our names, that their delicate vocal cords had pronounced their syllables, and that they meant something in their lives. They had had to labor over proper spellings and to check our addresses in the phone book or by the metal numbers nailed to the trees. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

He undressed, lay down, put out the light. Two names he whispered into his pillow, the few chaste northern syllables that meant for him his true and native way of love, of longing and happiness; that meant to him life and home, meant simple and heartfelt feeling. He looked back on the years that had passed. He thought of the dreamy adventures of the senses, nerves, and mind in which he had been involved; saw himself eaten up with intellect and introspection, ravaged and paralysed by insight, half worn out by the fevers and frosts of creation, helpless and in anguish of conscience between two extremes, flung to and fro between austerity and lust; raffiné, impoverished, exhausted by frigid and artificially heightened ecstasies; erring, forsaken, martyred, and ill -- and sobbed with nostalgia and remorse. ~ Thomas Mann

If death is like a sonnet then life would be a haiku. The sonnet, a lyrical poem, the beauty and magic with the last breath~ love, words fading and floating off into the abyss that is space whilst our everyday lives or days more important than normal become just a mere whisper in only a few short syllables through which we convey with our hearts the truth of the universe in a single moment briefly. ~ R.M. Engelhardt

About your easy heads my prayers
I said with syllables of clay.
What gift, I asked, shall I bring now
Before I weep and walk away?
Take, they replied, the oak and laurel.
Take our fortune of tears and live
Like a spendthrift lover. All we ask
Is the one gift you cannot give. ~ Tana French

Sweetheart, darling, dearest, it was funny to think that these endearments, which used to sound exceedingly sentimental in movies and books, now held great importance, simple but true verbal affirmations of how they felt for each other. They were words only the heart could hear and understand, words that could impart entire pentameter sonnets in their few, short syllables. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

Syllables govern the world. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends. ~ James Vila Blake

True, they were broken and stammering syllables; but they were human speech. My soul, conscious of new strength, came out of bondage, and was reaching through those broken symbols of speech to all knowledge and all faith. ~ Helen Keller

When people want to sound smart, they add syllables to words, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to books. They try to make up in quantity and complexity what they lack in quality. That's bullshit! They're just hiding their bullshit! ~ Robert McKee

We must take our sentences seriously, which means we must understand them philosophically, and the odd thing is that the few who do, who take them with utter sober seriousness, the utter sober seriousness of right-wing parsons and political saviors, the owners of Pomeranians, are the liars who want to be believed, the novelists and poets, who know that the creatures they imagine have no other being than the sounding syllables which the reader will speak into his own weary and distracted head. There are no magic words. To say the words is magical enough. ~ William H Gass

I cannot say your worships have delivered the matter well when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables [ ... ] our very priests must become mockers if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards, and your beards deserve not so honorable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion or to be entombed in an ass's packsaddle [ ... ] more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave with you. ~ William Shakespeare

Utterance
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

They left. Among the many dumb rules of paragraphing foisted on students in composition courses is the one that says that a paragraph may not consist of a single sentence. Wilkerson ends a richly descriptive introductory chapter with a paragraph composed of exactly two syllables. The abrupt ending and the expanse of blankness at the bottom of the page mirror the finality of the decision to move and the uncertainty of the life that lay ahead. Good writing finishes strong. ~ Steven Pinker

Syllables and letters may not be tangible, but they can still destroy your entire life faster than a bullet from a gun.
One word.
That was all it took to extinguish the sun from my sky. ~ Aly Martinez

The Prince's name preserved, in the boldness with which its opening syllables were - to borrow an expression from music - attacked, and in the stammering repetition that scanned them, the energy, the mannered simplicity, the heavy refinements of the Teutonic race, projected like green boughs over the "Heim" of dark blue enamel which glowed with the mystic light of Rhenish window behind the pale and finely wrought gildings of the German eighteenth century. This name included, among the several names of which it was composed, that of a little German watering-place to which as a small child I had gone with my grandmother, under a mountain honoured by the feet of Goethe, from the vineyards of which we used to drink at the Kurhof the illustrious vintages with their compound and sonorous names like the epithets which Homer applies to his heroes. And so, scarcely had I heard it spoken than, before I had recalled the watering-place, the Prince's name seemed to shrink, to become imbued with humanity, to find large enough for itself a little place in my memory to which it clung, familiar, earthbound, picturesque, appetizing, light, with something about it that was authorized, prescribed. ~ Marcel Proust

Words whose sense is the most ill-defined are sometimes those that possess the most influence. Such, for example, are the terms democracy, socialism, equality, liberty, &c., whose meaning is so vague that bulky volumes do not suffice to precisely fix it. Yet it is certain that a truly magical power is attached to those short syllables, as if they contained the solution of all problems. ~ Gustave Le Bon

I used to be a great fan of doing crosswords. When you're fiddling around with anagrams, you get wonderful jumbles of syllables that become interesting. ~ Douglas Adams

My grandmother taught me how to read, very early, but she taught me to read just the way she taught herself how to read - she read words rather than syllables. And as a result of that, when I entered school, it took me a long time to learn how to write. ~ Vik Muniz

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

Love your name. I don't want to cheat myself out of a single syllable. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year. ~ William Safire

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. "Touché... ~ Shannon Hale

I've been having these dinner parties at my house in L.A. for years that turn into charades parties. I'm so good at breaking stuff down into syllables and sounds. If I were to be doing anything else besides being an actor, I would be a professional charades player. I'm not sure if it exists, but if it didn't, I'll create it. ~ Wilson Bethel

MEEEEE!" it bellowed.
She jumped back again, dropping the basket lid. What the devil?
She opened it again, and looked down at the wee thing.
"MEEEEEE!"
"Good heavens, you are loud," she told it. "I thought cats were supposed to say 'meow.' There are two syllables in meow."
"MEEEEEE!" It corrected vehemently and with great singularity. ~ Julie Anne Long

Whispering can disguise the shape of syllables, but not of mood. ~ Gregory Maguire

But when you don't follow them up with any action, they're completely pointless. They're just sounds and syllables. But they mean absolutely nothing. ~ J. Sterling

Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths. ~ Carl Sandburg

Maybe that's where it started and they brought it back from the desert, some kind of contagious psychic wound, guilt based. Maybe it's the dark matter, invisibly making up most of the universe. Maybe it was methane thawing at the bottom of the sea, releasing some ancient spore from the melted icebergs. Maybe it was the hole in the ozone, the collapse of the upper atmosphere. Maybe it was the overload of information, the swarms of data generated by every human gesture. Maybe it was the networking craze, the resurrection of dead friendships and memories meant to be lost, now resurfacing like rusted shipwrecks to reclaim our attention and scramble our sense of time. Maybe it was the death of an artist at the hands of a zealot. Maybe it was the particles made to collide. Maybe the mapping of the genome. Maybe the clashing of gods, the tug-of-war over our souls, not one of them refusing to let go, instead opting to see us sliced in two by Soloman's sword. Maybe it was food becoming a prop for food. Maybe it was a distant comet dusting us with its tail of poisoned ice. Maybe it was someone uttering a combination of syllables that should never be uttered. Maybe it was the emergence of collective intelligence, the flattening of the world. Maybe the game we inhabit had a glitch. Maybe the angel's horn had finally been blown. ~ Kenneth Calhoun

I love the language, it sounds as if it should be writ on satin with syllables which breathe of the sweet South ~ Lord Byron

Cahoots.' He repeated the word, forming the syllables with exaggerated motions of his lips. 'Lovely word, that. The kind of word that's necessary to use, purely for the pleasure of saying it. ~ Terry Pratchett

Imagine Eminem writing a play with complex raps and syllables, and melodies flowing in and out. That's what it was like for me listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda, it was incredible. So it just goes to show that if you put your teaching style in a certain form, that will attract the attention of the people you are trying to teach. ~ Ryan Montgomery

When he frowned again, she was fairly sure that the nomenclature did not please him, and she found herself wishing she had been birthed to other syllables. ~ J.R. Ward

[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as ... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. ~ John Milton

One made the observation of the people of Asia that they were all slaves to one man, merely because they could not pronounce that syllable No. ~ Plutarch

Out of the simple consonants of the alphabet and our eleven vowels and diphthongs all possible syllables of a certain sort were constructed, a vowel sound being placed between two consonants. ~ Hermann Ebbinghaus

Life is a time when you get pleasure until somebody get your ass. and one of the ways to prolong pleasure is to not chop up time with syllables. ~ Padgett Powell

It doesn't matter how simple your name is; it's always a surprise to hear it spoken aloud by someone new, how the specific arrangement of syllables sounds coming out of their mouth. ~ Katie Heaney

I looked into his eyes and then down at his mouth before continuing. "Have you ever noticed how pretty and beautiful words can be? How easy it is to say the things you think someone wants to hear. How you can affect a person's entire day with just a few measly sentences?"My slight smile dropped. "But when you don't follow them up with any action, they're completely pointless. They're just sounds and syllables. But they mean absolutely nothing." My gaze glossed over as my mind wandered. ~ J. Sterling

At somewhere around 10 syllables, the English poetic line is at its most relaxed and manageable. ~ James Fenton

Some women get divorces on the grounds of incompatibility; others, on just the first two syllables. ~ Evan Esar

A person rises on a word and falls on a syllable. ~ Don DeLillo

Because,' he said, like both syllables hurt. ~ Rainbow Rowell

One of the deep fundamentals of poetry is the recurrence of sounds, syllables, words, phrases, lines, and stanzas. Repetition can be one of the most intoxicating features of poetry. It creates expectations, which can be fulfilled or frustrated. It can create a sense of boredom and complacency, but it can also incite enchantment and inspire bliss. ~ Edward Hirsch