Speech is a great blessing, but it can be a great curse, for while it helps us to make our intentions and desires known to our fellows, it can also, if we use it carelessly, make our attitude completely misunderstood. A slip of the tongue, the use of an unusual word, or of an ambiguous word, and so on, may create an enemy where we had hoped to win friend. Again different classes of people use different vocabularies, and the ordinary speech of an educated man may strike an uneducated listener from what it does to men of our own class. Thus speech is not a gift to use lightly without thought, but one which demands careful handling: only a fool will express himself alike to all kinds and conditions of men.
The above paragraph is directly summarized here:
Speech is a valuable gift, but, if we are to make ourselves understood, we must use it carefully,since we may distort our meaning not only by the careless use of words, but by ignoring the fact that words do not always mean the same thing to different people.
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