Quotes About Language

Para escrever bem — acredito com firmeza —, é preciso ser discreto.

You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?

The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.

There is an hour of the afternoon when the plain is on the verge of saying something. It never says, or perhaps it says it infinitely, or perhaps we do not understand it, or we understand it and it is untranslatable as music.

He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.

It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.

The years go by, and I've told the story so many times that I'm not sure anymore whether I actually remember it or whether I just remember the words I tell it with.

My taste runs to hourglasses, maps, seventeenth-century typefaces, etymologies, the taste of coffee, and the prose of Robert Louis Stevenson.

As the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory - there are only words.

To speak is to fall into tautology.

All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a share past

The things that are said in literature are always the same. What is important is the way they are said. Looking for metaphors, for example: When I was a young man I was always hunting for new metaphors. Then I found out that really good metaphors are always the same.

Pensé en un mundo sin memoria, sin tiempo; consideré la posibilidad de un lenguaje que ignorara los sustantivos, un lenguaje de verbos impersonales y de indeclinables epítetos. Así fueron muriendo los días y con los días los años, pero algo parecido a la felicidad ocurrió una mañana. Llovió, con lentitud poderosa.

I cannot combine some characters dhcmrlchtdj which the divine Library has not foreseen and which in one of its secret tongues do not contain a terrible meaning. No one can articulate a syllable which is not filled with tenderness and fear, which is not, in one of these languages, the powerful name of a god. To speak is to fall into tautology.

Words, displaced and mutilated words, words of others, were the poor pittance left him by the hours and the centuries.

Hay una hora de la tarde en que la llanura está por decir algo; nunca lo dice o tal vez lo dice infinitamente y no lo entendemos, o lo entendemos pero es intraducible, como una música

Según la doctrina idealista, los verbos vivir y soñar son rigurosamente sinónimos.

There is nothing but quotations left for us. Our language is a system of quotations.

Cervantes' text and Menard's are verbally identical; but the second is almost infinitely richer.

The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry.

All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass?

Cuando, en Ginebra o Zurich, la fortuna Quiso que yo también fuera poeta, Me impuse, como todos, la secreta Obligación de definir la luna. Pensaba que el poeta es aquel hombre Que, como el rojo Adán del paraíso, Impone a cada cosa su preciso Y no verdadero y no sabido nombre.

Lo que decimos pocas veces se parece a nosotros.

Considerai anche che nei linguaggi umani non c'è proposizione che non implichi l'universo intero; dire la tigre è dire le tigri che la generarono, i cervi e le testuggini che divorò, il pascolo di cui si alimentarono i cervi, la terra che fu madre del pascolo, il cielo che dette luce alla terra.