Quotes About Language

He could not bear the thought that a barrier of words should drop between them again

In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs; as

Don't you know how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one wants to but what one can?

In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even though but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs

To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.

Dogs are indeed the most social, affectionate, and amiable animals of the whole brute creation; but love approaches much nearer to contempt than is commonly imagined; and accordingly, though we caress dogs, we borrow from them an appellation of the most despicable kind, when we employ terms of reproach; and this appellation is the common mark of the last vileness and contempt in every language.

As you can hear, it's difficult to learn another language after forty.

For me, as for many kids, words had a magical (and sometimes sexual) aura, and I would look up in my mother's medical dictionary words such as penis , intercourse , or homosexuality , exciting words no matter how dispiriting the definition, exciting just because they appeared in print.

The French word for "plot," trame , also means "heft" or "weave.

Young people dislike and even fail to understand our slang; my gay students ask me what "tricking" means. It's all old whore's slang, of course.

America was the attic of French culture.

In America everyone called the merest acquaintance a 'friend' – Guy had taken up the habit. It made him feel better about not having any real friends.

In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things

Do writers have to be such monsters in order to create? I believe that they do. It is a paradox that while wrestling with language to capture the human condition they become more callous, and cut off from the very human traits which they so glistening depict. There can be no outer responsibility, no interruptions, only the ongoing inner drone, rhythmic, insistent, struggling to make a living moment of both beauty and austerity.

Con la lengua se puede llegar a cualquier parte o a ninguna.

Ay que ver qué Hola y qué Zara Home os estáis volviendo los maricones. Digo, los gays.

Their reputation and their language encouraged them, however, to despise the ignorance and to overlook the progress of the Latins. 93 In the love of the arts, the national difference was still more obvious and real; the Greeks preserved with reverence the works of their ancestors, which they could not imitate;

The same language, even in the camp of the Huns, was used by his ambassador Apollonius, whose bold refusal to deliver the presents, till he had been admitted to a personal interview, displayed a sense of dignity, and a contempt of danger, which Attila was not prepared to expect from the degenerate Romans.

Thrippsy pillivinx, Inky tinky pobblebockle abblesquabs? - Flosky! beebul trimble flosky! — Okul scratchabibblebongibo, viddle squibble tog-a-tog, ferrymoyassity amsky flamsky ramsky damsky crocklefether squiggs. Flinkywisty pomm, Slushypipp

Las calles tenían nombres descriptivos, acordes a sus condiciones y uso, como Pute-y-Muse (Puta Perezosa), Merdeuse (Mierdosa), Tire-Boudin (Tira-Vergas) y otros incluso peores.

People think they are individuals because they use the word ''I'' so often.

Words are our slaves: they may be used to fetch a pair of slippers, or to build the great pyramid of Giza: they depend on syntax to make the order of the world manifest, to raise stones into arches and arches into aqueducts.

made him more conscious of how little experience he had of saying what he meant.

Other people knew what they were meant to say, knew what they were meant to mean, and other people still - otherer people - knew what the other people meant when they said it.