Quotes About Language

It is said that he spoke the language of the greased palm, and this language is international.

As someone who has long observed the techniques of creating politically acceptable language, and has sometimes been a practitioner of that craft, I would say that the principal difference between the first and the revised draft is in the weasel words.

Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.

Man lives 'in' meanings, in that which is valid logically, esthetically, religiously. The most fundamental expression of this fact is the language which gives man the power to abstract from the concretely given and, after having abstracted from it, to return to it, to interpret and transform it. The most vital being is the being which has the word and is by the word liberated from bondage to the given.

Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man's being alone. It 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.

Man's ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate.

Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man's being alone. It 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. Although, in daily life, we do not always distinguish these words, we should do so consistently and thus deepen our understanding of our human predicament.

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.

David always pronounced the name to rhyme with Snowy, Tintin's faithful terrier, but his northern colleagues, like Mick Ronson, pronounced the Bow part to rhyme with plow.

In later months, Davies thought about the manifesto. There were gaps in it, bits that didn't make sense, and he wondered if David knew that and decided it didn't matter. Later still he realized what David had been doing: "He'd read about Elvis, and he'd read about Hollywood in the thirties and forties, and he was building a brand—before that language had even been invented.

In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well.

Poetry is simply literature reduced to the essence of its active principle. It is purged of idols of every kind, of realistic illusions, of any conceivable equivocation between the language of "truth" and the language of "creation."

Poetry is a separate language, or more specifically, a language within a language.

This, dear Phaedrus, is the most important point: no geometry without the word. Without it, figures are accidents, and neither make manifest nor serve the power of the mind.

La jeunesse est un temps pendant lequel les conventions sont et doivent être mal comprises : ou aveuglément combattues, ou aveuglément obéies. On ne peut pas concevoir, dans les commencements de la vie réfléchie, que seules les décisions arbitraires permettent à l'homme de fonder quoi que ce soit : langage, sociétés, connaissances, œuvres d'art.

The poem: a prolonged hesitation between sound and sense.

La plupart sont aveugles dans cet univers du langage; sourds aux mots qu'ils emploient. Leurs paroles ne sont qu'expédients; et l'expression pour eux n'est qu'un plus court chemin : ce minimum définit l'usage purement pratique du langage. Être compris, ---comprendre, --- sont les bornes entre lesquelles se resserre de plus en plus ce langage pratique, c'est-à-dire, abstrait.

And all else is literature.

Take eloquence and wring its neck.

Je vois le peintre et son épouse, tous deux francophones, je vois des tableaux, quelques phrases sont échangées et c'est entre nous un coup de foudre mutuel qui devait se perpétuer plus de trente ans, jusqu'à ce que mort s'ensuive. La cordialité réfléchie et directe de l'intelligente Suzanne Donnelly Jenkins y sera pour beaucoup.

The woman smiles and says, "Hey," the standard Norwegian greeting. I "Hey" back, but then she says a whole sentence and I am force to explain, in English, that I have no idea what she is saying. I feel like a fraud, and I see a change in the focus of her eyes. I am a stranger, and even if I am no less welcome, I am still a stranger.

Animation is everywhere - it is the omnipresent visual language of the 21st century.

For ten years I had lived within an elusive circle defined by an unshared childhood; by the daily effort, like an extra pressure of the will, required to speak this uncannily familiar language which fit me like a second skin, without ever being mine.

Words are nets through which all truth escapes ("News From The World")