Quotes About Language

False eloquence is exaggeration; true eloquence is emphasis.

Never use the word, 'very.' It is the weakest word in the English language; doesn't mean anything. If you feel the urge of 'very' coming on, just write the word, 'damn,' in the place of 'very.' The editor will strike out the word, 'damn,' and you will have a good sentence.

Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day.

Kinquering Congs their titles take.

A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.

Melody had heard some of these people from the Ukraine singing. He hadn't understood one word. Yet he didn't have to know the words to understand what they were wailing about. Words didn't count when the music had a tongue. The field hands of the sloping red-hill country in Kentucky sang that same tongue.

I love to use these phrases - 'with the greatest respect', 'in all modest', 'I humbly submit' - which in fact always imply the complete opposite.

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

What openings of providence do we wait for? We can neither expect to be transported into the heathen world without ordinary means, nor to be endowed with the gift of tongues, &c. when we arrive there. These would not be providential interpositions, but miraculous ones. Where a command exists nothing can be necessary to render it binding but a removal of those obstacles which render obedience impossible, and these are removed already.

Careful with fire" is good advice we know."Careful with words" is ten times doubly so.

What common language to unravel?

A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.

By listening to his language of his locality the poet begins to learn his craft. It is his function to lift, by use of imagination and the language he hears, the material conditions and appearances of his environment to the sphere of the intelligence where they will have new currency.

I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the poet is.

Words cut deeper than knives. A knife can be pulled out, words are embedded into our souls.

Words cut deeper than knives

Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us, not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express.

Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants.

To him who in the love of Nature holdsCommunion with her visible forms, she speaksA various language.

dead enemy soldiers n. decommissioned aggressor quantum dead soldier n. non-viable asset

As the Italian proverb says, 'Translators are traitors.' At some level we all are traitors to the text, saying a little less than the Greek says (thus leaving some meaning behind) or a little more (when trying to clarify). Under- and over-translation. A good reason to learn Greek and Hebrew, and an even better reason to read more than one translation.

Greek normally uses a singular verb when the subject is neuter plural. It is an indication that the writer is viewing the plural subject not as a collection of items but as a single group.

Urdu is an aristocratic language. It was not the language of the working classes. Those who are left—the artisans—speak Karkhana [factory] Urdu. The Urdu of the poets is dead.

Little wonder that the British were soon being reviled in the Surat streets 'with the names of Ban-chude* and Betty-chude† which my modest language will not interpret'.