Quotes About Language

this Londonised a Caribbean tradition of story telling and use of language that had previously been the preserve of reggae. While that was to prove pivotal in the evolution of jungle, more immediately it was an important step for young black London in general.

You cannot read Dickens without putting in a little more effort. You cannot eat a ripe pawpaw without its innards and juice spilling down your chin. Likewise, the language of Dickens makes your mouth do strange things, and when you're not used to his words your jaw will creak.

He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.

Neither the inveterateness of the mischief, nor the prevalency of the fashion, shall be any excuse for those who will not take care about the meaning of their own words, and will not suffer the insignificancy of their expressions to be inquired into.

What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?

Many of the kids coming into my classes at the university are all but illiterate. You give them a page to read and they can't tell you what's on it. Try teaching them the classics, and they can't pronounce the words. Ask them to write about something, and they can't make complete sentences - much less spell anything over two syllables.

Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?

You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.

I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.

Music is the universal language of mankind -- poetry their universal pastime and delight.

Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these? Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught The dialect they speak, where melodies Alone are the interpreters of thought? Whose household words are songs in many keys, Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!

Nise: Bien lo merece Eliodoro, griego poeta divino. Celia: ¿Poeta? Pues parecióme prosa. Nise: También hay poesía en prosa.

Poetry is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.

The lapse of ages changes all things - time - language - the earth - the bounds of the sea - the stars of the sky, and everything 'about, around, and underneath' man, except man himself, who has always been and always will be, an unlucky rascal. The infinite variety of lives conduct but to death, and the infinity of wishes lead but to disappointment. All the discoveries which have yet been made have multiplied little but existence.

Words are the dress of thoughts; which should no more be presented in rags, tatters, and dirt than your person should.

I give my vote for Mr. Johnson to fill that great and arduous post. And I hereby declare that I make a total surrender of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a freeborn British subject, to the said Mr. Johnson, during the term of his dictatorship. Nay more; I will not only obey him, like an old Roman, as my dictator, but, like a modern Roman, I will implicitly believe in him as my pope, and hold him to be infallible while in the chair; but no longer.

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.

Culture is roughly anything we do and the monkeys don't.

Northwesterners coined the term "sun break," a notion completely lost on most of the country.

words were like magic, like ancient runes, symbols, that, if you knew how to unlock and decode them, conjured stories—people and pictures in your mind.

Shockingly tactless," Lady Warford said. "Unfortunately, Longmore can be tactless quite fluently in several languages

She's never met an adjective or adverb she didn't like.

But you are a charming and beautiful dunces, madame. And," he continued in French, "a charming and beautiful woman can get away with murder. Can you imagine that any man here would prosecute you for assassinating our language?

The Cockney accent was almost impenetrable. *Nothing* was "nuffin," and aitches were dropped from and attached to the wrong words, and some of the vowels seemed to have arrived from another planet.