Quotes About Language

The simplest and the most incredible thing in the world had come true again: two people speaking to each other, each for himself; and sounds, called words, shaped the same images and feelings in that palpitating mass behind the skull, and out of meaningless vibrations of the vocal chords and their unexplainable reactions in the viscous gray convolutions, skies suddenly grew again in which were mirrored clouds, brooks, past times, growth and decay and hard-won wisdom.

I wanted to say something, but I could not. It is difficult to find words when one really has something to say. And even if one knows the right words, then one is ashamed to say them. All these words belong to other, earlier centuries. Our time has not the words yet to express its feelings. We can only be offhand—anything else rings false.

He did indeed always refer to us as swine, but there was, nevertheless, a certain respect in his tone.

A bitch. No prostitute. A bitch. If you were a Russian you would understand.

Hteo sam nešto da kažem, ali nisam mogao. Teško je na?i re?i kad treba nešto stvarno kazati. A kad na?emo potrebne re?i, onda se stidimo da ih izgovorimo. Sve te re?i pripadaju prošlim vekovima. Naše doba još nema izraze za svoja ose?anja. Ona mogu da budu samo drugarska - sve ostalo nije pravo. - Pat - rekoh joj. - Stari hrabri druže...

Her mouth speaks words I do not understand. Nor do I fully understand her eyes; they seem to say more than we anticipated when we came here.

Šteta - re?e Lilijan - i nije tako tužna re? kako se misli. - Je li i to neko vaše novo otkri?e? - Ovo je današnje otkri?e. Pejstr odma?e stolicu. - Uzdam se u vaša sutrašnja otkri?a. - Nadanje - re?e Lilijan - nasuprot tome, mnogo je tužnija re? nego što se misli.

Die Worte wehten im Zwielicht hin und her, sie waren ohne Bedeutung, und das, was von Bedeutung war, war ohne Worte.

How shabby the truth can become when one articulates it.

Sve je krivo što govorim, postaje krivo dok govorim. Re?i su lažne i sentimentalne i ne izri?u pravi smisao i pretvaraju se u noževe, a ja te ne želim povrediti, ali svaka re? mora biti povreda ako ho?u da sam iskrena. A sve i kada verujem da sam iskrena, ja to ipak nisam.

Je voulais dire quelque chose, mais je n'y parvins pas. C'est difficile de trouver des mots lorsqu'on a quelque chose à dire.

In Sanskrit, "independent woman" is a synonym for a harlot. Hence the woman who is unattached to a man is not only a universal feminine type but a sacral type in antiquity.

If I told you, you wouldn't know what I was talking about.

In the glacier of words grinding toward the twentieth century, Prendergast's card was a single fragment of mica glinting with lunacy, pleading to be picked up and pocketed.

Even the language used by Hitler and party officials was weirdly inverted. The term "fanatical" became a positive trait. Suddenly

He wrote: "Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.

He wrote: "Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational." The resulting prose, he wrote, "may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.

The resulting prose, he wrote, "may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving of time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clear thinking.

Sentences wandered through the report like morning glory through the pickets of a fence.

scarify, a six-hundred-year-old word that only Churchill would use in crucial diplomatic correspondence—" would scarify their names for a thousand years of history.

In this time when writing long letters was everyday practice, men of normal sensibility saw these cards as the most crabbed of media, little better than telegrams

phenomenon for which the word-minting power of the German language did not fail: Zweifrontenkrieg.

the queen a copy of Henry Watson Fowler's famous 1926 guide to the English language, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage.

Hunt was the janissary of a dead vernacular.