Quotes About Language

Le mot 'chat' signifie 'la chose blanche qui ronronne' (lors du cours sur la Métaphysique des Espèces Naturelles, Collège de France 2013-2014)

El desencanto es un oxímoron, una contradicción que el intelecto no puede resolver y que sólo la poesía puede expresar y custodiar

The poet wants to 'say' something. Why, then, doesn't he say it directly and fortrightly? Why is he willing to say it only through his metaphors? Through his metaphors, he risks saying it partially and obscurely, and risks saying nothing at all. But the risk must be taken, for direct statement leads to abstraction and threatens to take us out of poetry altogether.

And for her, now, replaced by the plain language of the dogs, who in a few syllables have everything to say.

The fact is that no language can be truly alive that is not used by women.

dog'll hunt." We were southerners and spoke the same language. This was not a visiting lecturer in jurisprudence but a man in the trenches. Suddenly I wanted to be there with him, under fire. I shook Beldon Ruth's hard hand, and I took the job he offered me. When I passed the bar exam I married Toba, and we moved into an apartment on Neptune Beach, forty minutes from the courthouse in downtown Jacksonville.

Words know that there is always the right word and no other word will do.

Words are forceful but fair, flexible, yet solid, strong, dependable. Words are multi-cultural, without prejudice. They believe in freedom, equality, equanimity. If a word were a man he'd be a man of his word.

Love is a word the English don't use except when they talk about their horses and dogs.

It is a curse not speaking languages and in a broken world more important than ever before.

Sorry is what the English say when they don't know what to say.

A few words in a stranger's language reminds us of our shared humanity.

An elementary pupil was asked by the teacher about her view of writing. The little girl said, Good writing requires a good vocabulary. A good writer requires a good conduct in many ways.

Many people are misquoted not by the language that they speak, but by the language of their behaviors that protrude their personalities.

The human race is not defined by the language that we speak, but by the actions that come from the human mind.

The five vowels of the English language are always present in the three revitalizing words of family therapy: smile, laugh, cry. There's none in the third word, so we add the missing "o" !

The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.

Seriously, I do not know what to say of this book [ Absalom, Absalom!] except that it seem to point to the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor, talent… this is a penny dreadful tricked up in fancy language and given a specious depth by the expert manipulation of a series of eccentric technical tricks. The characters have no magnitude and no meaning because they have no more reality than a mince-pie nightmare.

An aphorism can contain only as much wisdom as overstatement will permit.

Shut your fucking face.

I dreamed I spoke in another's language, I dreamed I lived in another's skin, I dreamed I was my own beloved, I dreamed I was a tiger's kin. I dreamed that Eden lived inside me, And when I breathed a garden came, I dreamed I knew all of Creation, I dreamed I knew the Creator's name. I dreamed--and this dream was the finest-- That all I dreamed was real and true, And we would live in joy forever, You in me, and me in you.

The critics have always been slow to appreciate the true quality of the personal content of Joyce's work - a fact which has led to a serious misunderstanding of the fundamental double-talk inherent in his symbolic language.

All I can do is turn a phrase until it catches the light.

have been at a great feast of languages," says Moth, "and stolen the scraps.")