As he whispered Holy Things...

Words.

They are what we speak most of the time. Do we ever stop to realise how much power we give words? Think about the words that you would use in the average day. Sure there'd be just the normal ones like 'and', 'if', 'but' and so on and so forth. In addition to these over-used words, there would also, most likely, be some 'swear' words. These include such 'swears' as fuck, shit, cunt and other miscellaneous 'swears'.

Why are these words classified differently as others?

Why do people cringe at the sound of them?

Why do they have so much power?

I believe the answer to all these questions is that we let them do these things. We used these words less and less, so they became more of 'a big deal' when people did use them. From this sprung what you could almost call a 'fear' of these words, and what they meant when they came from people's mouths. The actual meaning of the words stopped mattering, 'fuck' no longer meant the act of fornication, 'cunt' was no longer a vagina, and 'shit' was no longer excrement. The words began to have the same amount of power regardless of the way that they were said, muttering 'fuck' had the same power as screaming it at someone. This gave way to the words having amazing power, people feared their use, and to a lesser extent felt differently towards the people that would use them. The power of the word should not lie in the word itself, but lie within the person saying the word. The same way screaming has a different effect to whispering. The words are slowly losing their power, as they become more often used.
Therein lies another problem though. The English language is becoming more and more impoverished as less of it's words are being used. When was the last time you heard someone use a word that you had never heard before, or use a word that you did know, just they used it in a different context? People are getting lazier with they way they speak. For an exclamation of surprise or discontent, most people would just use fuck  or shit, when there are hundreds of better words to use, like zounds, this word is so bad, that in the 17th century it was banned by the government of the United Kingdom. My message to all of you is that never hesitate to use any word, but don't just limit these words to the ones we all know. Find new ones to say, bring the English language back to life.