Good Words and Bad Words

Source: Google Books

By Blessed Giles of Assisi (d. 1262)

He who utters good words is like the mouth of God, and he who utters bad words is like the mouth of the devil. When the servants of God are gathered together to converse among themselves, they ought to speak of the beauty of the virtues, so that the virtues may please them; for if the virtues please them, they will practice them, and such practice will make them more and more lovable to them.

The more a man feels himself full of vices, the more he needs to speak of virtue; by often speaking of virtue, he returns to it more easily and embraces it more readily.

But what then shall we say? The world is so corrupt that we can neither speak well of what is good, nor speak ill of what is evil. We cannot say how excellent good is, nor how evil evil is, for this is something beyond our understanding.

I therefore consider it a virtue no less great to know how to keep silent at the right time than to know how to speak well. It seems to me that a man ought to have a neck as long as a crane’s, so that each of his words might pass through several knots before leaving his mouth.