Quotes About Language

Utangaç insanlar?n ?zd?rab?, haklar?nda olu?an dü?ünceyi bilmemekten kaynaklan?r; bu dü?ünce -ne olursa olsun- aç?kça ifade edilir edilmez ?zd?rap sona erer.

The more deeply language is probed, the more traces it reveals of the beings that produce it.

There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.

The selective instinct of the artist tells him when his language should be homely, and when it should be more elevated; and it is precisely in the imperceptible blending of the plain with the ornate that a great writer is distinguished. He uses the simplest phrases without triviality, and the grandest without a suggestion of grandiloquence.

In complex trains of thought, signs are indispensable.

The art of writing is not, as many seem to imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into rhythmical order, but the art of placing before the reader intelligible symbols of the thoughts and feelings in the writer's mind.

This book also contains what some people call 'profanity'. I think they're full of shit.

Speak in French when you can't think of the English for a thing—turn out your toes when you walk—and remember who you are!

'Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.Beware the Jabberwock, my son!The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!Beware the Jubjub bird, and shunThe frumious Bandersnatch!

Sentence first—verdict afterwards.

"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on."I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least—at least I mean what I say—that's the same thing, you know.""Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

Once the web has lost its charm, its terms lose theirs; suddenly they seem contingent and open to revision. For those epi-predators who work with the signifiers themselves rather than the things they supposedly signify, language is not a medium that helps us see the true, the real, the natural. Language is a tool assembled by creatures with "no way" trying to make a world that will satisfy their needs; it is a tool those same creatures can disassemble if it fails them.

Our chief reason for over-rating the importance of tools and machines is that man's most significant early inventions, in ritual, social organization, morals, and language, left no material remains, while stone tools can be associated with recognizable hominid bones for at least half a million years.

Just as ritual, if I have correctly interpreted it , was the first step toward effective expression and communication through language, so taboo was the first step toward moral discipline. Without both, man's career might have ended long ago, as so many powerful rulers and nations have ended their lives, in psychotic outbreaks and life-depressing perversions.

Something essential to man's creativity, even in science, may disappear when the defiantly metaphoric language of poetry gives way completely to the denatured language of the computer.

Even if the rest of man's history were lost, the vocabularies, the grammars, and the literature of all his present languages would testify to a mind infinitely above the level of any other living creature's. And if some sudden mutation afflicting the progeny of the entire human race resulted in the birth of only deaf-mutes, the outcome would be almost as fatal to human existence as that of a nuclear chain reaction.

But though the parts of language are standardized and in a sense mass-produced, they achieve the maximum of variety, individuality, and autonomy. No technology has yet approached this degree of refinement: the intricate mechanisms of the so-called Nuclear Age are extremely primitive in comparison, for they can utilize and express only a narrow segment of the human personality divorced from its total historic expression.

"Equestrian," by the by, is the gayest word in the English language. In fact, I thought Brokeback Mountain should have been called "Two Equestrians."

These people are the first line of defense when it comes to the terrorist threat, but the word "shit" makes them cry. "Why didn't he say poopie?! Why didn't he say poopie?!"

In Mumbai, Marathi schools are shutting down and Urdu schools are increasing. The parties governing the BMC are giving permission to these schools. If Urdu schools are rising, you know whose numbers are increasing and who is coming to the city.

I've never really had the urge to make an English album.

We all need poetry. The moments in our lives that are characterized by language that has to do with necessity or the market, or just, you know, things that take us away from the big questions that we have, those are the things that I think urge us to think about what a poem can offer.

The glib, facile, simplistic, and prefabricated language by which we as consumers are constantly surrounded is a language that flatters us, that urges us to indulge ourselves, to get away from it all, to be unique by opting in, talking back, liking us on Facebook, leaving a review, sharing, retweeting, etc.