Quotes About Language

Foot-and-a-half-long words.

A word once uttered can never be recalled.

The hemlock tree is named spruce-pine, while spruce is he-balsam, balsam itself is she-balsam, laurel is ivy, and rhododendron is laurel.

The highlander's word "furriner" means to him what ???????? did to an ancient Greek.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

Wörter meine Fallschirme mit euch springe ich ab

A revelation from God, if it were written only in the Hebrew or Greek, would be considered of sufficient value to recompense the labor of learning the language.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

Membaca adalah tulang dan sumsum, limpa dan darah bagiku.

I exaggerate but only to revive the dying art of hyperbole.

It is from his grandmother that Henry learns that punctuation can be a weapon. With a comma you can hurt someone.

A very clear and succinct statement is in the introduction to his Methods of Logic, fourth edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982

Here is an appropriate use of the exclamation mark: The last thing he expected when the elevator door opened was the snarling tiger that leapt at him. "Ahhhhh!" ... In almost all situations that do not involve immediate physical danger or great surprise, you should think twice before using an exclamation mark. If you have thought twice and the exclamation mark is still there, think about it three times, or however many times it takes until you delete it.

We have no way of knowing what words you are going to misuse, so we cannot offer you a list. What we can offer, though, is a test that you yourself can apply to any word, whenever you are in doubt. A Test: Do I Know This Word? Ask yourself: 'Do I know this word?' If the answer is no, then you do not know it.

When the reader has stopped to wonder at your delamificatious vocabulary, or, worse, when the reader has stopped because the word you've used has no more meaning to him than a random ptliijnbvc of letters, the reader is not involved in your story. ... Generally, saying 'edifice' instead of 'building' doesn't tell your reader anything about the building; it tells the reader that you know that word edifice.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

None of these classy locutions mean anything different from the simpler ones they replace. They work ceremonially, not semantically. Writing in a classy way to sound smart means writing to sound like, maybe even be, a certain kind of person. Sociologists, and other scholars, do that because they think (or hope) that being the right kind of person will persuade others to accept what they say as a persuasive social science argument.

It is no coincidence that music is called the universal language and used as a form of worship.

The conventional Christian word is muffled, confused, and vague.

The English imposed their language on Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and they weren't terribly nice about it.

Wherever it's spoken, Gaelic sounds like a combination of Swedish and Hebrew.

Christians who seek to formulate an adequate view of sin, salvation, and how sinners are saved are duty-bound to take seriously the diversity of Christian language.

After learning the language and culture of the Chinese people, these Jesuits began to establish contacts with the young intellectuals of the country.

On July 26 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.