Waves

Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that is created in us. 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 ?

O. Wilde, The picture of Dorian Gray