When the Cotesia wasp lays eggs in a caterpillar, its larvae devour it slowly, from the inside, invisibly. A bad word does the same.
Here is an example: a young girl, from beyond, tells the medium about her suicide. For her, it all started when, barely seven years old, she accidentally knocked over a tray loaded with glasses.
« While I was about to run to warn the lady who was doing the service, I heard a person shout a few words which like poisoned arrows paralyzed me:"How clumsy this little one is! How could such talented parents give birth to such a disabled child?" »
This murderous sentence remained engraved in me and even if I thought I had forgotten it, It continued its destructive work by regularly reminding itself to me.
From that day on, my long legs, which I compared to those of herons, my tall stature, my thinness, seemed to me a major handicap which I could not get rid of and which I could not change.
(...) Imperceptibly, I began to resent my parents for being so beautiful and so happy while I struggled with what I believed to be my handicaps. »
It is said that speech reflects our thought. But it's wrong.
Released without a minimum of reflection, on the contrary it often betrays it. This is why we must be vigilant with the words that come out of our mouths, especially when we are angry ,
because they can be irretrievable
.
Likewise, a word can save
- What can I do for my friend Alice, who has cancer? « Tell her about our life, our world. I'll guide you to find the words. »
(A. Ray-Wendling, "A Sun Too Late")Contributions by Anne Ray-Wendling on the subject of:The WAY
, LOVE
, LIFE
or DEATH
« We will never know the long-term effects of a smile or a word of encouragement. »
« Those who talk all the time never say anything. » (Marlo Morgann, 'Message from Eternity')Contributions by Marlo Morgann on the subject of:The WAY
, LOVE
, LIFE
or HEALTH
* *
Words and vanity
_ _
« The search for truth can only be done in silence, it would take long hours of peace before addressing certain subjects. This is why these areopagus of intellectuals who, one after the other proclaim their opinions on such and such a subject, could be related to meetings of mental exhibitionism.
In these colloquia where eloquence takes on such great importance, nothing really profound is broached. This mode of exchange is distorted by the desire to shine. These talks are illusionist's games, the man likes to listen to himself speak. »
« Caricature of the gift. And he rises to speak at banquets. It bends towards the guests like a tree heavy with its fruits. But the guests have nothing to pick.
But there are always those who think they are picking because they are more stupid than the first, and consider themselves honored by him. And if he knows it, the vain one, he believes that he has given since the guest has received. And they sway in front of each other like two barren trees. »
Never say what is not true!
Engrave this in your heart.
Horrify even the shadow of lies.
The word carries light.
The true word has its weight.
The word is sacrament.
The bridge between matter and spirit: the VERB.
Whatever it seems to cost us, never lie. The Bible says so: « The liar undermines one of the pillars of the world. »
The lie is tempting: with a word everything works out, but sooner or later, everything goes haywire. « With a lie one goes far, but without hope of return. »
(Jewish proverb)
« Lying to others comes secondarily, it's always and first to yourself that you lie. »
« Watch the words that pass your mouth. Beware of their power. The diverted word is a lamb that escapes the gaze of the shepherd, a madness that leads the whole flock to the sea. »
(Marek Halter)
« The word, before falling from your lips, must have rested within yourselves. »
« My sons and my daughters, avoid frivolous conversations, do not frequent the company of laughers. Stay away from backbiters; so no one will listen to them. If their companions shunned them, the slanderers would be silent. »
(Rabbi Eliezer the Great (11th century))
« The sophistWho argues, reasons falsely despite the apparent truth (usually involves bad faith) is of all the decadent generations. Subtle, reasoning, corrosive, they swarm as fatally as worms in a decomposing body. Whether they call themselves atheists, nihilists or pessimists, they have always looked alike. They always deny God and the soul, that is to say the supreme Truth and Life. Those of the time of Socrates said that there is no difference between truth and error. They made a point of proving anything and its opposite, affirming that there is no other justice than force. With that, self-satisfied, vivacious, charging dearly for their lessons. »
(Édouard Schuré, 'Death and beyond')Contributions by Édouard Schuré on the theme of:The WAY
, LOVE
, LIFE
or DEATH
« In a language that formulates but does not grasp, two truths can oppose each other. »[ Saint-Exupéry ]
The word and the thought
_ _
« To speak is to densify (materialize a thought).
To put into words is to structure in matter, therefore to limit in narrow substances. »(so it's a delicate operation)
« I need sustained vigilance to achieve the mysterious alchemy between the word and the inner image to convey.
I shudder at the monstrous waste of dead words that clutter up all our reports, reducing them most often to a dialogue of the deaf, where everyone listens to themselves. »
(Jeanne Guesné, 'The Great Passage')Contributions by Jeanne Guesné on the theme of:The WAY
, LOVE
, LIFE
or DEATH
« Retains the spirit rather than the sign. Absorb the marrow of the words I am about to speak and abandon their carcass. »
(D. Meurois and A. Givaudan, 'Terre d'émeraude')Contributions by Anne Givaudan on the theme of:The WAY
, LOVE
, LIFE
, HEALTH
or DEATH
« People like order. This is why, when two realities begin to assert themselves and seem to contradict each other, one immediately assumes that one of them must be false. It takes a lot of maturity to see and accept that in fact they might both be true. »
- Yes, said my father, you are right. And yet I don't think like you...
(...) What the words convey is a sign that is difficult to read; the stones (of the temple) show neither shadow nor silence.
(...) Do not listen to men speak if you wish to understand them.
(...) It is not by way of language that I will transmit what is in me. What is in me, there are no words to say. I can only signify it insofar as you already understand it by means other than speech, because born of the same god, you resemble me.
(...) In my youth, when people resisted the arguments by which I sought not to build but to dress my thought, I abandoned the fight for lack of effective language against a lawyer better than me, but without ever renouncing my permanence, knowing that what he was demonstrating to me was simply that I was expressing myself badly. »
« What I brought you is not a reasoning but a point of view from which to reason.
I have not seen men transformed by the arguments of logicians. But, having addressed myself to them in essence, through the play of a ceremonial, I opened them to my light. »
« I discovered the universality of speech. On a certain level, stripped of egocentrism, I bathe in the word which lives of its own life, and does not need me to exist.
Here lies the mystery: if I am there with my greed, my vanity, my ambition or my anguish, my fears, my sadness and this need to always govern and control everything within me, then it will be a pedantic and ridiculous language (my usual language). But, if, by a grace whose mechanism I don't know, my little self fades away, is silent, then... the word flows by itself in a harmonious assemblage of sounds and meanings translating images that warm the heart, which speak to the whole man, and touch him in his deepest feelings.
When it is I who speak, the verbiage is communion with the other. When “it” speaks, everything is simple and beautiful. The speaker and the listener each receive a nugget of gold. A moment is lived, neutralizing, the time of a sigh, the ice of the intellectual iceberg which sclerizes sensitivity.
You must always address your interlocutor within the understanding that is his, using the words in the very sense that he gives them and at the level from which he receives them. »
(Jeanne Guesné, 'The Great Passage')Contributions by Jeanne Guesné on the theme of:The WAY
, LOVE
, LIFE
or DEATH
« My personality is irrelevant. It is insofar as it is erased and silent that "something" passes and expresses itself. »
(Jeanne Guesné, 'The Great Passage')Contributions by Jeanne Guesné on the theme of:The WAY
, LOVE
, LIFE
or DEATH
« The wise most often remain silent. Not out of pride, of course, and not out of detachment because they are love, but because they know that everything has been said, although not everything has yet been understood. »
Sometimes it takes great strength to be silent. « Silence can replace thoughtless retort; he can be the rock against which the foaming waves break in vain.
Obviously there are cases where, on the contrary, you do not have the right to be silent; in advising you to remain silent, I am speaking of those in which you are personally implicated. »
« You have to know when to speak and when to be silent, when to act and when not to act. »
(Gandhi)Contributions of Mahatma Gandhi on the subject of:The WAY
, LOVE
, LIFE
or DEATH
« In silence you will hear and you will act, because you will not give an opinion without hindsight. »
(R. Terral-Meyer, 'Lettres de l’invisible')Contributions by Rosine Terral-Meyer on the theme of:The WAY, LIFE
or DEATH
« Purify your lips with silence, sometimes it takes months of silence to erase a useless word. That at the hour of your death, the angels can look at them without hurting their eyes. »
Contributions by Anne Ray-Wendling on the subject of:The WAY
, LOVE
, LIFE
or DEATH
The range of a word
Words and vanity
Speech is sacred
The word and the thought
Know how to be silent
☞ but sometimes you have to talk
☞ Exchange, knowing how to listen
