What a terrible disease that must be if it could kill God in a man.

If I don't say the thought right I might destroy it.

He was afraid of defiling the love which filled his soul.

Yes, he said in a voice indescribable, you are right. I am afraid of him. Therefore I swear by God that I will seek out this man whom I fear until I find him, and strike him on the mouth. If heaven were his throne and the earth his footstool, I swear that I would pull him down.

How? asked the staring Professor. Why?

Because I am afraid of him, said Syme; and no man should leave in the universe anything of which he is afraid.

And yet I am afraid, afraid of what my words will do to me, to my refuge, yet again.... If I could speak and yet say nothing, really nothing? Then I might escape being gnawed to death.

A person can destroy me with two words. It can just be the way they say them, the inflection.

She would be quiet at first. Then she would say a word about something small, something she had noticed, and then another word, and another, each one flung out like a little piece of sand, one from this direction, another form behind, more and more, until his looks, his character, his soul would have eroded away . . . I was afraid that some unseen speck of truth would fly into my eye, blur what I was seeing and transform him from the divine man I thought he was into someone quite mundane, mortally wounded with tiresome habits and irritating imperfections.

This is what destroys the fine cities and homes of mortals: words spoken too well.

It's the damage that we do and never know. It's the words that we don't say that scare me so.

"I think he had no notion how little an effect the word sin had on me. He might as well have said, "Homosexuality is bad juju

"كان الجميع يتحدث عن "الاندفاع إلى الفوضى الذى لا يمكن إيقافه"، و "عدم إمكانية توقّع شئ فى الحياة اليومية"، و "الكارثة التى تقترب"، وذلك من غير أية فكرة واضحة عن الثقل الفادح لهذه الكلمات المخيفة. وهذا ما جعله يخلص إلى أن جائحة الخوف تلك لم تكن متولدة عن ثقة حقيقية، تزداد كل يوم، بأن هناك كارثة وشيكة، بل عدوى المخيلة التى كانت قابليتها كبيرة للسقوط فريسة الذعر التى تنتجه بنفسها؛ وهذا يمكن أن يؤدى إلى كارثة فعلية آخر الأمر: بكلمات أخرى، الهاجس الزائف الذى يمكن أن يستسلم له إنسان فقد صوابه عندما تحلل البنية الداخلية لحياته (ترابط عظامه ومفاصله وما بينها)، ويتخلى، لشدة طيشه، عن قوانين روحه التى وضعها الأسلاف... إذا فقد قدرته على ضبط العالم المنظم الذى يحفظ له كرامته. كان يقلقه كثيرًا أن أصدقاءه ظلوا يرفضون الإصغاء إليه رغم محاولاته المتواصلة بإقناعهم بهذا الأمر."

Whom God would destroy, he first makes mad.

The religious impulse can be very dangerous. It damages, sometimes permanently.

If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with my lips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gave me shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging to you!