Ugo Betti Quotes

One of the things that writing and speech can do is express what we're thinking one thought at a time.

These glorious things-words-are man's right alone...Without words we should know no more of each other's hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of his fellow dog....for, if you will consider, you always think to yourself in words, though you do not speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind longings, feelings which we could not understand ourselves.

The thought process can never be complete without articulation.

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?

We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

Thought and speech are inseparable from each other. Matter and expression are parts of one; style is a thinking out into language.

We don't know what we think until we see what we say.

Be respectful of words. They mean something.

You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.

And yet, words are the passkeys to our souls. Without them, we can't really share the enormity of our lives.

Literature exists inside the language. It's made of words.

Everything we say is a story. But nothing we say is just a story.

Every action is an idea before it is an action, and perhaps a feeling before it is an idea, and every idea rests upon other ideas that have preceded it in time.

Those things for which we find words, are things we have already overcome.

I do think all good and evil comes from words. I have to tune myself into a good temper with something musical, and I run to a book as a child to its mother.

Speech is the mother, not the handmaid, of thought.

Thought engenders thought. Place one idea on paper, another will follow it, and still another, until you have written a page; you cannot fathom your mind. There is a well of thought which has no bottom; the more you draw from it, the more clear and fruitful it will be.

Society matters not so much. Words are everything.

By speaking, by thinking, we undertake to clarify things, and that forces us to exacerbate them, dislocate them, schematize them. Every concept is in itself an exaggeration.

I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.

Speech is our second possession, after the soul-and perhaps we have no other possession in this world.

The devil take these people and their language! They take a dozen monosyllabic words in their jaws, chew them, crunch them and spit them out again, and call that speaking. Fortunately they are by nature fairly silent, and although they gaze at us open-mouthed, they spare us long conversations.

What a pity it is that there are so many words! Whenever one wants to say anything, three or four ways of saying it run into one's head together and one can't tell which to choose. It is as troublesome and puzzling as choosing a ribbon ... or a husband.

Words are so awesome. Words are containers for power. They carry either creative power or destructive power.

Words are often things also, and very precious, especially on the gravest occasions. Without "words," and the truth of things that is in them, what were we?