Quotes About Language

Late in her life, my mother embraced the word "fuck" but could never quite figure out its place in a sentence.

If you're looking for sympathy you can find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.

awesome," which has replaced "incredible," "good," and even "just OK." Pretty much everything that isn't terrible is awesome in America now.

I'm now told that this is not called 'going to sleep' but rather 'passing out,' a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgement.

There's a short circuit between my brain and my tongue, thus "Leave me the fuck alone" comes out as "Well, maybe. Sure. I guess I can see your point." This

of yesterday, the London Underground announcements will no longer begin with "Ladies and gentlemen." Gender-queer people said it made them feel excluded, so from now on the conductors will say, "Hello, everyone.

My brother politely ma'ams and sirs all strangers but refers to friends and family, his father included, as either "bitch" or "motherfucker.

The Romanians really do lead the world when it comes to cursing.

A lot of our outlawed terms were invented by black people and then picked up by whites, who held on to them way past their expiration date. "My bad," for example, and "I've got your back" and "You go, girlfriend." They're the verbal equivalents of sitcom grandmothers high-fiving one another, and on hearing them, I wince and feel ashamed of my entire race.

Let us hope the time will come when language is most efficiently used where it is being most efficiently misused.

Britannia became the land of the Angles or Ængla Land.

Latin – if increasingly debased and diluted – continued to be the spoken and written language, used by the invaders and the native populations alike.

Above all, Douglass is remembered most for telling his personal story—the slave who willed his own freedom, mastered the master's language, saw to the core of the meaning of slavery, both for individuals and for the nation, and then captured the multiple meanings of freedom—as idea and reality, of mind and body—as perhaps no one else ever has in America.

I wish I knew what he called himself. I'm sure that treecats have their own names for themselves." "Me, too," Stephanie agreed, "and I bet they have their own names for us, too. I just hope mine isn't 'Source of Celery.

Falderson, he said quietly to Bahzell in passable Navahkan, is as stupid as the day is long. He craned his neck to gaze up at the hradani and shook his head. In fact, he's even stupider than I thought. You, sir, are the biggest damned hradani-no offense-I think I've ever seen.

Alliteration seems to offend people.

The primitive in each of us climbs closer to the surface during the night, for the moon sings to it, and the cold void between the stars speaks its language. To that savage self, evil can look lovely in too little light.

Words are the wellspring of the world, and language is the most powerful weapon in the ancient and still unfolding war between truth and lies.

Language can't describe reality. Literature has no stable reference, no real meaning. Each reader's interpretation is equally valid, more important than the author's intention. In fact, nothing in life has meaning. Reality is subjective. Values and truths are subjective. Life itself is a kind of illusion. Blah, blah, blah, let's have another scotch.

The word impossible contains the word possible' What's that-- some Zen thing?' I think Star Trek. Mr. Spock.

I do not permit blasphemy, the F-word, or obscenities such as soy milk at my table. Consider yourself chastised.

Nothing can be imagined, nothing can be visualized in our minds, until we have a word for it. Therefore, when I give myself to the free flow of any words that trip off my tongue without predetermination, I am tapping into the primal creative power at the heart of the cosmos. Or maybe I'm just a bullshit artist.

In the beginning was the word. Before all else, the word. So we speak as if words matter, because they do.

People sometimes speak in code, often without realizing they are doing so, as much a mystery to themselves as others.