Quotes About Language

In this great age of communication, there a lot of people you can't actually understand. I know everyone tweets, and twits and texts and all that, but actually we've all got voices, and it is awfully nice to hear them and if you can understand what people are saying.

The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight.

I find this miraculous. I never cease to wonder at it. That words are more durable than anything...

I control the world so long as I can name it. Which is why children must chase language before they do anything else, tame the wilderness by describing it, challenge God by learning His hundred names.

Has any non-dipshit man ever used the word "ladies" not followed by the word "room"?

Even one person's misunderstanding [of a blue joke] may not be worth the next guy's laugh.

we don't have a twenty-letter alphabet, we have a twenty-six-letter alphabet." And then I say, "Oh, I guess I left out U R A Q T!" And then you say, "That's still only twenty-five." And I say, "I'll give you the D later.

U bent hier blijkbaar al een poosje niet meer geweest,' zei hij in steenkolenzweeds. 'Dat cafe is al twee jaar dicht', en ik dacht, waarom denken Denen altijd dat alle Noren Zweden zijn en waarom spreken ze dan zo ongelooflijk slecht Zweeds. Er zijn verdomme toch drie landen in Scandinavie.

But the same in the plural in ia must be. E, or i, are the ablative's ends,—mark my song, While or to the nominative case doth belong; For the neuter aforesaid we settle it thus: The plural is ora; the singular us.

Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is the burden of the curse of Babel.

it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet

He gave man speech, and speech created thought, which is the measure of the universe.

Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.

And as this creation itself is poetry, so its creators were poets; and language was the instrument of their art

Although computers allow people to talk at the speed of light, no one talks that fast.

George Orwell has written that "political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."1

A proverb is an ornament to language.

How does the brain wire words? Why do the Swiss manage three languages, while most Americans have trouble with one?

I don't know what that means. To truly live." "To find work that you love, and work harder than other men. To learn the languages of the earth, and love the sounds of the words and the things they describe. To love food and music and drink. Fully love them. To love weather, and storms, and the smell of rain. To love heat. To love cold. To love sleep and dreams. To love the newness of each day.

Maybe words, like potions, were also capable of magic.

I use the pay phone to call my friend Noel. The last time I was here he took me up a mountainside in Connemara with a seventy-eight-year-old poteen-maker who'd learned his craft as a teenager from his father. We spent the day watching him double-distill brown bog water in two oil drums over a turf fire into something that tasted like the finest malt. Noel acted as interpreter, as the old man spoke no English. Perhaps he'll have another adventure in store for me this time.

I find my grandfather, buried with Great-Aunt Hannah and Uncle Jack. His surname is spelled 'MacCarthy', with an extra 'a'; like many names here, it's a translation from the Irish, so the 'a' is optional, and may appear and disappear with the generations.

Verbal abuse is the use of language to shame, scare or hurt another. Dysfunctional parents routinely use name-calling, sarcasm, and destructive criticism to overpower and control their children. Verbal abuse is as commonplace in the American family as homework and table manners. It is modeled as socially acceptable in almost every sitcom on television.