Quotes About Language

what delights the poet is 'unintelligibility' ...(where) language doesn't sound like anything anyone could possibly say in 'real life' or in 'real philosophy.

Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes, they must submerge, cut through, get beyond the ultimate reverse-discourse, including the one that laughs at the very idea of pronouncing the word "silence"...In one another we will never be lacking.

I fail to see why you did not understand that groceryman, he did not call it 'ground ground nuts,' he called it ground ground-nuts which is the only really SENSible thing to call it. Peanuts grow in the GROUND and are therefore GROUND-nuts, and after you take them out of the ground you grind them up and you have ground ground-nuts, which is a much more accurate name than peanut butter, you just don't understand English.

i go through life watching the english language being raped before me face, like miniver cheevy, i was born too late. and like miniver cheevy i cough and call it fate and go on drinking.

I fail to see why you did not understand that groceryman, he did not call it "ground ground nuts," he called it "ground ground-nuts" which is the only really SENSible thing to call it. Peanuts grow in the GROUND and are therefore GROUND-nuts, and after you take them out of the ground you grind them up and you have ground ground-nuts, which is a much more accurate name than peanut butter, you just don't understand English.

i go through life watching the english language being raped before me face. like miniver cheevy, i was born too late.

Re America & the UK] we are two countries divided by a common language

And I'll bet you," I said to Patsy, "that men who've never had any trouble at all saying 'charwoman' or 'cleaningwoman' will find it absolutely impossible to say 'clergywoman'.

Re America & Britain] we are two countries divided by a common language

You will tell me the quiet story of your day's work, without any object except to give me your thoughts and your life. You will speak of your childhood memories. I shall not understand them very well because You will be able to give me, perforce, only insufficient details, but I shall love your sweet strange language.

All the translations of a poem in all possible languages may add nuance to nuance and, by a kind of mutual retouching, by correcting one another, may give an increasingly faithful picture of the poem they translate, yet they will never give the inner meaning of the original.

En ce point est quelque chose de simple, d'infiniment simple, de si extraordinairement simple que le philosophe n'a jamais réussi à le dire. Et c'est pourquoi il a parlé toute sa vie.

No aprehendemos de nuestros sentimientos más que su aspecto impersonal, aquel que el lenguaje ha podido clasificar de una vez por todas porque. más o menos, en las mismas condiciones es el mismo para todos los hombres. Así, hasta en nuestro propio individuo la individualidad se nos escapa.

Proximity to this death makes me nostalgic for the French language.

Words and phrases grew only slowly

il a commencé à sortir tout un paquet de grandes phrases qui résonnaient sous la voûte, et qui semblaient n'avoir ni queue ni tête, sauf qu'elles avaient bien la queue et la tête et qu'elles voulaient dire toute la colère et la tristesse qu'Oscar avait à l'intérieur de lui […].

An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.

The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.

But this idea, after a few quick triturations, would in turn become dangerous, for is there anything in a word which cannot be turned into a dagger?

Parmi ces langues romanes, le français se définit comme un idiome issu du latin vulgaire importé en Gaule par les conquérants romains.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

The habit of expression leads to the search for something to express. Something remains as a residuum of the commonplace itself, if one strikes out every commonplace in the expression.

The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement.