LANGUAGE QUOTES V

quotations about language

In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?

PABLO NERUDA

The Book of Questions

Tags: Pablo Neruda


If the reason you are having your child learn a foreign language is so that they can communicate with someone in a different language twenty years from now -- well, the relative value of that is changed, surely, by the fact that everyone is going to be walking around with live-translation apps.

MAX VENTILLA

"Learn Different: Silicon Valley disrupts education", The New Yorker, March 7, 2016


Language, which is the uniting bond and very medium of communion between men, is at the same time by the great variety of tongues, the means of severing and estranging nations more than anything else.

HORACE SMITH

The Tin Trumpet: Or, Heads and Tails, for the Wise and Waggish


A country without a language is a country without a soul.

ELIZABETH GREIWE

"The luck of the Irish language student", Chicago Tribune, March 16, 2016


In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

MARK TWAIN

Innocents Abroad

Tags: Mark Twain


Speech is a rolling press that always amplifies one's emotions.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Madame Bovary

Tags: Gustave Flaubert


In general the languages of most unpolished people have a great force and energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner.

EDMUND BURKE

Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

Tags: Edmund Burke


Language is a living original; it is not made but grows. The growth of language repeats the growth of the plant; at first it is only root, next it puts forth a stem, then leaves, and finally blossoms.

WILLIAM SWINTON

Rambles Among Words: Their Poetry, History and Wisdom


Perhaps the sad and empty language that today's flabby humanity pours forth, will, in all its horror, in all its boundless absurdity, re-echo in the heart of a solitary man who is awake, and then perhaps that man, suddenly realizing that he does not understand, will begin to understand.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

The Confession

Tags: Arthur Adamov


Wouldn't it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the nuisance of communicating in a different language?... Within a decade or so, we'll be able to communicate with one another via small earpieces with built-in microphones. No more trying to remember your high school French when checking into a hotel in Paris. Your earpiece will automatically translate "Good evening, I have a reservation" to Bon soir, j'ai une réservation -- while immediately translating the receptionist's unintelligible babble to "I am sorry, Sir, but your credit card has been declined."

DAVID ARBESÚ

"Could the language barrier actually fall within the next 10 years?", The Conversation, March 28, 2016


Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.

STEPHEN FRY

A Bit of Fry and Laurie


If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

DOUG LARSON

attributed, If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?

Tags: Doug Larson


The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Tags: Christian Nestell Bovee


Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

GEORGE ORWELL

The English People


Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.

GENE WOLFE

"The Death of Doctor Island", Universe 3

Tags: Gene Wolfe


I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.

KATHERINE DUNN

attributed, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series


The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus

Tags: Ludwig Wittgenstein


Language is an art, and a glorious one, whose influence extends over all others, and in which all science whatever must center; but an art springing from necessity, and originally invented by artless men.

J. H. TOOKE

attributed, Day's Collacon


Language was invented for one reason, boys -- to woo women.

N. H. KLEINBAUM

Dead Poets Society


A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Walden

Tags: Henry David Thoreau