Quotes About Language

Between words and objects one can create new relations and specify characteristics of language and objects generally ignored in everyday life.

When confronting someone, refrain from using the words always or never. When you say to someone: "You always…" or "You never…," the other person is going to focus more on that one word

Aldo said he was bored to tearsies by my grandmother's diminutives.

If only traveling were about showing off your language skills, if only it did not also demand a certain commitment of body communication, of outright singing or dancing--I think I would be absolutely global by now.

You don't want to sound as though you used a Sharper Image catalogue for a thesaurus.

I can tell I'm getting older, because I find myself using words like "spacious," "roomy," and "comfortable" when I'm buying underwear.

On another occasion Padre Pio's spiritual director wrote him a letter in Greek, a language which the young monk did not know. Nonetheless, Padre Pio read the letter. Fr. Pannullo marveled at this and asked him how he learned the language. "My guardian angel explained everything to me," Padre Pio replied.

To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices.

He growled. "You know quite well that that locution is vile.

Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious effort to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try." -- Nero Wolf in Death of a Dude.

No man with any sense assumes that a woman's words mean to her exactly what they mean to him.

When I told [Lily Rowan] I wouldn't be able to make it to the Polo Grounds tomorrow, she began to call Wolfe names, and thought of several new ones that showed her wide experience and fine feeling for words.

Okay, Dolly Brooke killed her because she was going to marry a quote nigger unquote, and how do we prove it?' He frowned. 'I have told you not to use that word in my hearing.' 'I was merely quoting. It isn't - ' 'Shut up. I mean the word 'unquote' and you know it.

Contact is not a verb and I said be brief." "Yes, sir. The last time you told me that I looked it up in the dictionary and I certainly don't want to contradict you but it says contact is a verb. Transitive or intransitive." "Contact is not a verb under this roof.

If you like Anglo-Saxon, I belched. If you fancy Latin, I eructed.

He once said that I ride words bareback.

He dropped sheets on the fire, turned to look at her, and inquired, "Do you use 'infer' and 'imply' interchangeably, Miss Blount?" She did fine. She said simply, "No." "This book says you may. Pfui. I prefer not to interrupt this auto-da-fé. You wish to consult me?

The words hot, lot, and got were not apart of a ladies vocabulary.

Wow, holy cow, hubba hubba, gee whiz. That was some guy. Don't tell me he's your main squeeze!" "My what?" "Your honey. Your sugar. Isn't that right word?" "In England we're a little less colorful with our language. "So you say it?" "Boyfriend? Escort?" "And is he?" "Obviously not anymore," I said with a sigh.

Freshen up? Is that some horrible transatlantic slang? If you mean for a rest, a wash, a change of clothes, then please say so. People always said what they meant in my day.

Next thing we know you'll be teaching Podge to say 'mirror' instead of 'looking glass' and 'serviette' instead of 'napkin.

So none of the young men we encountered during our season gave you hot pants for them? Belinda! Your language. I've been mingling with Americans. Such fun. So Naughty.

These were facts, not myths, although what freight they carried I could not say. I was deaf in Simon's language, and blind in his culture. In the end, all I really

La ambigüedad desempeña un papel central e imprescindible, y su carácter universal no refleja otra cosa que su inevitabilidad.