Quotes About Language

The word sahib, which Sikhs use when they speak of the scripture, may become contentious in future. It was used respectfully in addressing, in particular, white men in the days of the Raj. The wife was known as the mem sahib, which indicated that her status derived from her husband. Sahib is used to acknowledge the status of the scripture in the same way, but some women writers may dispense with it, claiming that it reinforces the strong but unwarranted male dominance in the Sikh Panth.

Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.

We have long passed the Victorian era, when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby.

We write to-communicat"!

In a society that has become so oriented toward language as a way of representing truth, it is very possible to lose touch with your ability to feel and with it your ability to "remember" the shots themselves.

I) only write it now because I have grown to believe that there is no dangerous idea, which does not become less dangerous when written out in sincere and careful English. ("The Adoration of The Magi")

and that he delighted in Flaubert and Pater, read Homer in the original and not as a schoolmaster reads him for the grammar.

Seanchan (pronounced Shanahan), Chief Poet of Ireland.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.

Language is the mother, not the handmaiden, of thought; words will tell you things you never thought or felt before.

Poetry makes nothing happen.

When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over. from an essay for Writers by Nancy Crampton

For a desert island, one would choose a good dictionary rather than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable, for, in relation to its readers, a dictionary is absolutely passive and may legitimately be read in an infinite number of ways.

Oh dear white children, casual as birds, Playing among the ruined languages, So small beside their large confusing words.

O dear white children casual as birds, Playing among the ruined languages, So small beside their large confusing words, So gay against the greater silences Of dreadful things you did…

O dear white children casual as birds, Playing among the ruined languages, So small beside their large confusing words, So gay against the greater silences Of dreadful things you did: O hang the head, Impetuous child with the tremendous brain, O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain, Lost innocence who wished your lover dead, Weep for the lives your wishes never led.

Does this current deterioration and corruption of language, imprecision of thought, and so forth scare you—or is it just a decadent phase? AUDEN It terrifies me. I try by my personal example to fight it; as I say, it's a poet's role to maintain the sacredness of language.

Time, that is intolerant Of the brave and innocent, And indifferent in a week To a beautiful physique, Worships language, and forgives Everyone by whom it lives; Pardons cowardice, conceit, Lays its honours at his feet. Time, that with this strange excuse, Pardons Kipling and his views, And will pardon Paul Claudel, Pardons him for writing well.

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language." — W. H. Auden

Whatever else it may or may not be, I want every poem I write to be a hymn in praise of the English language.

A poet […] may talk nonsense, but it will probably be interesting nonsense.

Though language may be useless, for No words men write can stop the war Or measure up to the relief Of its immeasurable grief, Yet truth, like love and sleep, resents Approaches that are too intense, And often when the searcher stood Before the Oracle, it would Ignore his grown-up earnestness But not the child of his distress

Time that is intolerant Of the brave and the innocent, And indifferent in a week To a beautiful physique, Worships language and forgives Everyone by whom it lives; Pardons cowardice, conceit, Lays its honours at their feet. ...

Gilbert's response to being told they (the words 'ruddy' and 'bloody') meant the same thing was: "Not at all, for that would mean that if I said that I admired your ruddy countenance, which I do, I would be saying that I liked your bloody cheek, which I don't.