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

He had taken seriously words which were without importance, and it made him very unhappy.

There can be no doubt that distrust of words is less harmful than unwarranted trust in them. Besides, to distrust words, and indict them for the horrors that might slumber unobtrusively within them — isn't this, after all, the true vocation of the intellectual?

For he could coin, or counterfeit New words, with little or no wit; Words so debas'd and hard, no stone Was hard enough to touch them on; And when with hasty noise he spoke 'em; The ignorant for current took 'em;

His thoughts grew confused, and he mistook that quality for complexity.

"But, indeed, words are very rascals, since bonds [vows] disgraced them."
Viola: "Thy reason, man?"
Feste: "Troth [Truthfully], sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them."

He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.

the desire to say words overcame him and he said words without meaning, rolling them over on his tongue and saying them because they were brave words, full of meaning. 'death,' he muttered, 'night, the sea, fear, loveliness.

That was when I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at.

. . . I learned that words are no good; that words dont ever fit even what they are trying to say at.

he began to fear that his judgment of them had been blind.

Even words are not perhaps safe in these times.

He was not a man who prattled readily, especially in a foreign tongue. He gave the impression that each word was excavated from his interior by some up-to-date process of mining.

He seems to have this strange difficulty grasping that I actually mean what I say.