For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

What a gulf between impression and expression! That’s our ironic fate—to have Shakespearean feelings and (unless by some billion-to-one chance we happen to be Shakespeare) to talk about them like automobile salesmen or teen-agers or college professors. We practice alchemy in reverse—touch gold and it turns into lead; touch the pure lyrics of experience, and they turn into the verbal equivalents of tripe and hogwash.

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons.

Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes, and thanks to words, we have sunk to the level of the demons.

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.  Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.