"I haven't much opinion of words. They're apt to set fire to a dry tongue, that's what I say"
About this Quote
Ellen Glasgow gives voice to a hard-earned distrust of talk. Words are likened to sparks and the tongue to tinder; when the mouth is dry, any stray phrase can flare into heat without light. The image captures how idle chatter, gossip, and grandstanding ignite quickly in people starved for substance. It is a country idiom with a moral edge: a warning that speech untethered to experience, empathy, or responsibility burns more than it warms.
Glasgow, a realist chronicler of the American South, spent her career exposing the gap between genteel language and lived reality. In her worlds, elegant phrases smooth over economic decay, rigid social hierarchies, and private griefs. Polite talk keeps women in their roles, politicians in power, and families in denial. Against that backdrop, the line reads as a preference for deeds over declarations, and for the plain, weathered truth over the romantic flourish. Better a quiet, steady labor than a bright, destructive blaze of rhetoric.
The metaphor also indicts the speaker who longs to feel important, the dry-tongued self thirsty for attention. Such dryness makes language volatile; it seeks ignition rather than understanding. In times of political spectacle and social upheaval, this is the fuel of demagoguery, where slogans and accusations spread like fire through brush. Glasgow suggests that restraint, even silence, can be a form of integrity, and that speech should be tempered by humility, memory, and consequence.
There is irony, of course, in a novelist distrusting words. But Glasgow’s fiction embodies the paradox: language is valuable precisely when it resists bluster, when it cleaves to the grain of reality and holds itself accountable to action. The line is less a dismissal of language than a discipline for it. Moisten the tongue with thought, compassion, and work, and the spark becomes illumination rather than conflagration.
Glasgow, a realist chronicler of the American South, spent her career exposing the gap between genteel language and lived reality. In her worlds, elegant phrases smooth over economic decay, rigid social hierarchies, and private griefs. Polite talk keeps women in their roles, politicians in power, and families in denial. Against that backdrop, the line reads as a preference for deeds over declarations, and for the plain, weathered truth over the romantic flourish. Better a quiet, steady labor than a bright, destructive blaze of rhetoric.
The metaphor also indicts the speaker who longs to feel important, the dry-tongued self thirsty for attention. Such dryness makes language volatile; it seeks ignition rather than understanding. In times of political spectacle and social upheaval, this is the fuel of demagoguery, where slogans and accusations spread like fire through brush. Glasgow suggests that restraint, even silence, can be a form of integrity, and that speech should be tempered by humility, memory, and consequence.
There is irony, of course, in a novelist distrusting words. But Glasgow’s fiction embodies the paradox: language is valuable precisely when it resists bluster, when it cleaves to the grain of reality and holds itself accountable to action. The line is less a dismissal of language than a discipline for it. Moisten the tongue with thought, compassion, and work, and the spark becomes illumination rather than conflagration.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|
More Quotes by Ellen
Add to List
