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.