Quotes About Language

The sea, tasted, drunk away, dreamed away. An hour soul-eclipsed. The next, an autumn light, offered up to a blind feeling which came that way. Others, many, with no place but their own heavy centres: glimpsed and avoided. Foundlings, stars, black, full of language: named after an oath which silence annulled.

There is nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even when he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German.

What times are these when a conversation is almost a crime because it includes so much made explicit?

A poem, being an instance of language, hence essentially dialogue, may be a letter in a bottle thrown out to sea… . In this way, too, poems are en route… . Toward what? Toward something open, inhabitable, an approachable you, perhaps, an approachable reality.

Unreadability of this world. All doubles. The strong clocks back the fissure-hour, hoarsely. You, wedged into your deepest, climb out of yourself for ever. — Paul Celan, "Unreadability," Paul Celan: Selections . (University of California Press, March 14th 2005)

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech.

I am not sure the language I write in is spoken here, or anywhere.

A palavra de ir-a-pique que lemos. Os anos, as palavras desde então. Ainda o somos. Sabes, o espaço é infinito, sabes, não precisas de voar, sabes, o que em teu olho se gravou aprofunda-nos a profundeza.

At certain moments, words are nothing; it is the tone in which they are uttered.

In our analysis of complex systems (like the brain and language) we must avoid the trap of trying to find master keys. Because of the mechanisms by which complex systems structure themselves, single principles provide inadequate descriptions. We should rather be sensitive to complex and self-organizing interactions and appreciate the play of patterns that perpetually transforms the system itself as well as the environment in which it operates.

the real is actually the intersubjective meaning arrived at by a community in semiosis. One

A cat probably doesn't say to himself, 'Where did I go wrong? Why wasn't I able to get my idea across?' More likely, Leo's brain reacted very much like the human brain in such a situation, and he thought, 'That damned stupid human. He's too dumb to understand what I was trying to say.

You need to create an emotional bond with people over security, make it resonate with them,You need to talk in a language they understand, whether that be risk, revenue, compliance, the impact on them personally – whatever it is, you need to make that connection

This side of eternity in this broken world, cursing is the default language of the kingdom of self, but mourning is the default language of the kingdom of God. Which language will you speak today?

Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.

Death is a displaced name for a linguistic predicament.

Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its own mode of being.

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.

Consciousness ("here" and "now") is not "false and misleading" because of language; consciousness is language, and nothing else, because it is false and misleading.

No one in his right mind will try to grow grapes by the luminosity of the word "day.

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

God" must be an experience before "God" can be a word. Unless God is an experience, whatever words we might use for the Divine will be without content, like road signs pointing nowhere, like lightbulbs without electricity. Buddha would warn Christians, and I believe Rahner would second the warning: if you want to use words for God, make sure that these words are preceded by, or at least coming out of, an experience that is your own.