The language of friendship is not words but meanings
Source: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
Topic
Speech in this collection is always close to its failures and its abuses. Washington on freedom of speech and the led-like-sheep consequence of its removal is the most politically serious entry. Vergil on one man's eloquence and another's arms places speech in a taxonomy of powers: not everyone persuades through language, and the ones who use arms instead are not inferior, just differently equipped. Longfellow's loyalty-to-truth-through-speech is the ethical commitment: to speak what you think is a form of fidelity to both truth and self. Tolstoy's observation that "love" means too much to him, far more than his interlocutor can understand, is the most personal entry: speech fails most precisely at the moments of greatest feeling. Shaw on joking-by-telling-the-truth is the paradox that anyone who has been in a room where the truth was told as a joke will recognize immediately. Anatole France on well-said things being worth copying belongs under intellectual honesty: the tradition of recycling good speech is older than copyright law. What the collection argues is that speech is not a neutral medium. Every sentence is a choice about what to say, how to say it, and what to leave unsaid.
The language of friendship is not words but meanings
Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity.
The best teachers are those who have the freest command of thought and language.
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time.