And like bees in a deserted hive
Dead words smell bad.

Harsh words, though pertinent, uncouth appear:
None please the fancy, who offend the ear.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.

And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words.

Dark wings, dark words,” Ned said grimly.

[She] heard the bitter, heartsick words
that made the fires of Hell burn cold
and soothed the lost spirits under the world.

Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

It seemed to me as if the stones sang, in the strangest voices, in the language of Ultima Thule.

The unspoken words trembled in the air.

And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter — they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.

Harsh words live in the dungeon of the heart

In a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer.

Words are ugly when they travel in packs.