I hope I shall never tell any child of mine that “sticks and stones may break his bones but words will never hurt him!” It is a wicked lie; but it is a lie that was told to me in my own childhood more than once, when I required to be fortified against some dreaded interview or other.
Generally speaking, it is the meanings of words and the tone in which they are spoken which are the cause of pain. I have only lately realised that mere words, as such, irrespective of tone or meaning, mere quantity of utterance apart altogether from its quality, can inflict as much pain as a rebuff or a cold reply to an affectionate question. The pain is of the longus levis rather than the gravis brevis variety, but who shall say whether a night of mild but insistent toothache is better or worse than half an hour at the dentist’s?
–Owen Barfield, This Ever Diverse Pair (London: Victor Gollancz, 1950; repr. Oxford: Barfield Press, 2010), 36.
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