Quotes About Language

As you begin to realize that every different type of music, everybody's individual music, has its own rhythm, life, language and heritage, you realize how life changes, and you learn how to be more open and adaptive to what is around us.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.

My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc.

Every usage, no matter how bizarre or nonstandard, fascinates me, as it tells me something about the way language is evolving.

The word which denotes the act of baptizing, according to the usage of Greek writers, uniformly signifies or implies immersion.

I have heard my fill of hurtful words. I think it's especially egregious when citizens like me, who point out abuses in their country, are referred to as 'do-gooders.' This is how a phrase that can be used to stop an argument dead becomes part of common usage.

What's the shelf life of a 1931 movie? If it still exists, there will always be film buffs and a niche audience who will want to see it. But in terms of people even understanding in common usage, some of the words we use to describe these movies, I don't know how long that's going to last.

I do believe that our modern English usage has become way too clipped and austere. I have been reading excerpts from the journals of 18th-century seafarers lately, and even the lowliest press-ganged deck-swabber turns a finer phrase than I do most days.

Over my lifetime, heavy usage has woefully eroded profanity's power.

It's very easy to think about rhymes and just usage of words that sound good but don't mean anything. Basically, I try to put into song the way people actually talk.

Linguists have noticed that across the history of language some words start out as obvious, conscious metaphors and then slowly embed themselves in our daily usage in such a way that we're no longer aware that they are metaphors.

The tongue is the only tool that gets sharper with use.

Mathematical science shows what is. It is the language of unseen relations between things. But to use and apply that language, we must be able fully to appreciate, to feel, to seize the unseen, the unconscious.

Architects have made architecture too complex. We need to simplify it and use a language that everyone can understand.

Language makes infinite use of finite media.

I have never sat down and studied the Bible, never consciously echoed its language, and am, in reality, as ignorant of it as most brought-up Christians. All of the Bible that I use in my work is remembered from childhood and is the common property of all who were brought up in English-speaking communities.

I'm not one of those people who believes in going endlessly around finger wagging and ticking people off for occasional colourful use of language.

My mom speaks English - she moved to England in the '70s, so she's fluent in English. We use to speak in Spanish when I was a kid all the time, me and my mom. But when I went to boarding school, I kind of lost it a little bit.

I dislike Allegory - the conscious and intentional allegory - yet any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use allegorical language.

Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.

I appreciate people who try and use language in an interesting way.

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.

When I started studying acting, I was enamoured of actors who used movement to enhance the language.

Text input is certainly useful, but images and speech are a much more natural way for humans to express their queries. Infants learn to see and speak well before they learn to type. The same is true of human evolution - we've had spoken language for a long time compared to written language, which is a relatively recent development.