Quotes About Language

Nulla, nulla viene mai detto una volta sola - nulla!

Meu pai era dono de botequim, porém insistia que era preciso escolher as palavras com precisão, e nisso sou como ele. As palavras têm significados — meu pai só estudou até a sétima série, mas até ele sabia disso. Atrás do balcão ele guardava duas coisas pra resolver discussões entre seus clientes: um porrete e um dicionário.

Lev-en-thal to Le-vov! Lev-en-thal to Le-vov!" was an anapest

As a writer, I play with words all day long. I toy with them, listen for their overtones, crack them open, and try to stuff my thoughts inside.

Paul says that Spirit lives inside us, detecting needs we cannot articulate and expressing them in a language we cannot comprehend. When we don't know what to pray, he fills in the blanks. Evidently, it is our very helplessness that God, too, delights in. Our weakness gives opportunity for his strength.

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry. – Owen Barfield

Old English, the heart and soul of the old regime at Oxford, ceased to be a required course only as of 2002.

Sometimes they accuse her in Latin and she looks at them, baffled by a language that she has only ever heard spoken in church, in the Mass that she loves. How could these very sounds, these familiar beloved tones, so solemn and musical to her, now be the voice of accusation ?

A title like 'the Lady,' for those who are too mealymouthed to call a whore a whore.

Lucian doesn't seem to have mastered the English language but is fast forgetting all his German; this seems to be quite a good argument against his taking up French.

A comma . . . catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling, and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.

But the text recorded it as 'Hell, you're in my hand'—an H instead of a W." Irene grimaced. "You mean everyone who sees that text will believe my husband swore at his sword?" "I'm afraid so," Chem said apologetically.

Penny brought home a paper with her teacher's marking on it, and all I can say is the man comes across like an illiterate ass. He writes don't end a sentence with a proposition. No, that's not a typo, and yes, you can end a sentence with a preposition.

Mira, I wanna tell you something. I ain't got time to tell you what I should've when I had time, but I dig you a whole lot. Deeg you? she asked, puzzled. I explained to her what it meant and told her that I would write it to her in Spanish and say it like it was.

O que de pior acontece a qualquer pessoa é tornar-se inimigo da palavra

The greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on philosophy are most apt to lose sight, the difference between words and things, has been most strenuously insisted on by him (cp. Rep.; Polit.; Cratyl), although he has not always avoided the confusion of them in his own writings (e.g. Rep.).

If a person does not attend to the meaning of terms as they are commonly used in argument, he may be involved even in greater paradoxes

Well, Socrates, it's by no means uncommon for people to say what is not correct.

repetitions. The Greek is in places very ungrammatical and intractable.

How often a mother initiated a conversation with her child was not predictive of the language outcomes—what mattered was, if the infant initiated, whether the mom responded.

He was a bricklayer; for fifty years, in Italy, America, France, then again in Italy, and finally in Germany, he had laid bricks, and every brick had been cemented with curses. He cursed continuously, but not mechanically; he cursed with method and care, acrimoniously, pausing to find the right word, frequently correcting himself and losing his temper when unable to find the word he wanted; then he cursed the curse that would not come.

Wo sind die Andere? dove sono gli altri? - Forse trasferiti in altri campi ...? - propongo io Schmulek crolla il capo, si rivolge a Walter: - Er will nix verstayen - non vuole capire

Warum? - gli ho chiesto nel mio povero tedesco. - Hier ist kein warum - (qui non c'e' perche'), mi ha risposto, ricacciandomi indietro con uno spintone.

infin che un giorno senso non avrà più dire : domani (...jusqu'à ce qu'un jour dire demain n'ait plus de sens)