Quotes About Language

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

If you talk to a man in the language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

You have to be yourself while speaking someone else's language.

When he was young, brooks had seemed to speak to him in the tongues of men and angels. Now that he was an old man who spoke five or six languages - all of them poorly - the sound of water seemed to be the language of his nativity, some tongue he had spoken before his birth. Soft and loud, high and low, the sound of water reminded him of eavesdropping in some other room than where the party was.

in those days I didn't drink, smoke, swear, or speak Italian.

Few pay attention to the histories and the root pictures words can release. These neglected qualities are there, however, and the poets have always found them a self-delighting source of excitement.

Tell me how much a nation knows about its own language, and I will tell you how much that nation knows about its own identity.

Following the Beatles, who incidentally were put together by the Tavistock Institute, came other Made in England rock groups, who, like the Beatles, had Theo Adorno write their cult lyrics and compose all the music. I hate to use these beautiful words in the context of Beatlemania; it reminds me of how wrongly the word lover is used when referring to the filthy interaction between two homosexuals writhing in pigswill. To call rock music, is an insult, likewise the language used in rock lyrics.

The language of trees is even more remote from human intelligence than the language of beasts or of birds. What to these lovers, for instance, would the singular syllables wuther-quotle-glug have signified?

The reason we cry is because sometimes words are just not enough to tell our life story.

When will people finally realize that words can cut just as deeply as any blade...

Boys use the word 'friendship' to start love, girls use the word 'friendship' to end it... same word, different attitude.

Its funny how when you call a girl a bi... she get so pissed, but once you add a bad in front of it, it becomes a compliment.

I'm a polite person. I'll tell you excuse me and shut the f*ck up in the same sentence.

If I could rearrange the letters of the ABCs, I would put U and I together and next to each other forever.

Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.

Language... has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.

I wish 'You idiot.' was an appropriate way to end a work email.

And by 'K...' I mean 'fu.. you.'

Before. b-e-f-o-r-e, not B4. We speak English. Not bingo.

And then Satan said, 'Put the alphabet in math....'

I love the sound you make when you shut the fu.. up.

The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.

Will America be the death of English? I'm glad I asked me that. My well-thought-out mature judgment is that it will.