Quotes About Language

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.

I am not accustomed to the language of eulogy. I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women. But I must say, that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice.

Again the institution of slavery is only mentioned in the Constitution of the United States two or three times, and in neither of these cases does the word "slavery" or "negro race" occur; but covert language is used each time, and for a purpose full of significance.

I've received two key pieces of advice in regard to my books. The first is, "You should lay off the f-bombs." The other is, "You should add more f-bombs.

It's a useful exercise to forbid yourself the use of keynote words such as 'fury' or 'jealous' when dramatizing an emotional condition.

Trying to compose even a single sentence can have the same effect, as we try to juggle grammatical and syntactical alternatives plus all the possibilities of tone, nuance, and rhythm even a simple sentence offers. Composing, then, is a cognitive activity that constantly threatens to overload short-term memory.

Una comunicación escrita es como un territorio extenso y desconocido que te contiene a ti, a tu lector/a, tus ideas, tu propósito y todo lo que puedas hacer. Lo primero que debes hacer como escritor/a es explorar este territorio. Tienes que conocer las leyes de la tierra antes de hollarla.

Despite that seemingly conclusive language, the scope of state immunity from suit was far from settled, and remains a contested question even today.

The word may be mightier than the sword, but except for the s they are pretty much the same. Both are used to kill--and to save.

We still spoke Korean at home, but on the streets we always had to speak Japanese.

research', is probably one of the dirtiest words in the Indigenous world's vocabulary

Our survival, our humanity, our worldview and language, our imagination and spirit, our very place in the world depends on our capacity to act for ourselves, to engage in the world and the actions of our colonizers, to face them head on.

The programming language of juking is random walks.

Treat mathematics as a language, not as a vocation.

my delight in philology, my insistence on having language clear-cut and exact, impels me, when someone says it is cold and someone else that it is warm, to look at the thermometer and say: "Gentlemen, it is 69 degrees Fahrenheit in this room.

peace and good cheer on festive days. It was voted further that any member who moves from one place to another [at a banquet] so as to cause a disturbance shall be fined 4 sesterces. Any member, moreover, who speaks abusively of another or causes an uproar shall be fined 12 sesterces. Any member who uses abusive or insolent language to a president at a banquet shall be fined 20 sesterces. . . . From the excavations at Ostia we get a good idea of what the headquarters of a rich society

I travel around the world, experiencing every language, every religion... some places where there's just no reason to smile, because their lives are so difficult.

You were always uncomfortable with the rhetoric of emotion, which is quite a different matter from discomfort with emotion itself.

A well-constructed lie is assembled largely from the alphabet blocks of fact, which will as easily make a pyramid as a platform.

and Germans are obsessed with shit.

I believe the impulse to write comes out of a failure to communicate by any other means.

Language is alive, and you can't put it in the freezer. But

Hoffendahl is, in the effect he has upon others, not unlike what is told of Bakunin himself in his greatest days, when he could enthrall with his passion even those who could not understand the language he spoke in. But it is possible that James also had the famous Johann Most in mind. Most figured in the London press in 1881 when he was tried because his newspaper, Freiheit, exulted in the assassination of the Czar.

The true speech of man is idiomatic, if not of the earth and sky, then at least of the saloon and the bleachers.