The great practical difference between the word, written or spoken, and the visual image is that we cannot read the former unless ...we have been initiated into the mystery of language, whereas visual images can be made intelligible to all men who have eyes.... The spiritual difference between the written word and the visual image is equally great. Precise though a word is, evocative though it be, the actual machinery of visual perception is not engaged. All that takes place, takes place now within the mind; the retina and the neurons sleep; we are in a world which has been created by old, long-stored stimuli; the accidents of energy exterior to ourselves have been totally excluded from it. Even the spoken word is further from this spiritual purity than the word upon the page, for sounds have at least a sensual immediacy of a sort, but the written word is only the ghost of a sound. We have entered now into a realm not of images but of substitutes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits, by those who would make the written word as unl...ike as possible to the spoken one. It is the style of all those writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean or more than they feel, it is the style of most artists and all humbugs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We do not fear censorship for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liber...ty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue--the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word, that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the p...ath to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficul...ty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Written words differ from spoken words in being material structures. A spoken word is a process in the physical world, having an e...ssential time-order; a written word is a series of pieces of matter, having an essential space-order.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of ...art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;Mnot be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »