Quotes About Language

Ninety percent of all verbal expression has no filmic equivalent. "He's been sitting there for a long time" can't be photographed.

It's financial literacy. It begins with the ability to understand the words and the number systems of capitalism. If you don't understand the words or the numbers, you might as well be speaking a foreign language. And, in many cases, each quadrant represents a foreign language.

Computers will have to learn that when I quote from some old author who spelled differently from the machine, the wishes of the long-dead author will have to be respected, and the machine will have to mind its manners

Nothing is more dangerous to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.

If I had my way books would not be written in English but in an exceedingly difficult secret language.... This plan would have the advantage of scaring off all amateur authors, retired politicians, country doctors...who would not have the patience to learn the secret language.

You're all mad for words. Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books. Give me things!

The new priest in his whitish lab-coat gives you nothing at all except a constantly changing vocabulary which he -- because he usually doesn't know any Greek -- can't pronounce, and you are expected to trust him implicitly because he knows what you are too dumb to comprehend. It's the most overweening, pompous priesthood mankind has ever endured in all its recorded history, and its lack of symbol and metaphor and its zeal for abstraction drive mankind to a barren land of starved imagination.

Words are just farts from a lot of fools who have swallowed too many books.

There's the satisfaction of Eng-Lang-and-Lit; somebody else has said everything for you, and said it better.

Showing Christ as African, Asian, or Central American underlines the universality of his humanity. The depiction of the Holy Spirit as a hummingbird rather than a dove on the Mexican cruz de ánimas (Fig. 9.2) is a modest but striking instance of using meaningful visual language for a particular culture.

The lessons she'd been forced to learn were dry spare things, the facts without the sense of them, given in the simplest of language, as if words might disguise the truth or (worse) bring it to life.

Nothing?' said Corlath. 'I said there were two things. I have told you the first. You told us what you saw as you saw it. But this is the second thing: you spoke in the Old Tongue, what we call the Language of the Gods, that none knows any more but kings and sorcerers, and those they wish to teach it to. The language I just spoke to you, that you did not recognize- I was repeating the words you had said yourself, a moment before.

You are what you think about all day long. You are also what you say to yourself all day long. If you say that you are old and tired, this mantra will be manifested in your external reality. If you say you are weak and lack enthusiasm, this too will be the nature of your world. But if you say that you are healthy, dynamic and fully alive, your life will be transformed. Words have remarkable power.

Words affect the mind in a pronounced way. Whether they are spoken or written, they are powerful influences.

The eighth ritual is the Ritual of the Spoken Word.

Your vocabulary drives meaning in your life.

The words you use determine the way you feel. The

Sí, las palabras que empleas son semillas de la cosecha que recoges. Las palabras son poderosas.

Words affect the mind in a pronounced way. Whether they are spoken or written, they are powerful influences. While what you say to others is important, even more important is what you say to yourself.

Las palabras tienen el poder de crear

You empower everything you complain about. You strengthen the negative things you speak of. And you energize the problems you vocalize.

Words can inspire and words can destroy. Choose your words well.

The words you use determine the way you perceive reality. If you call a stumbling block a "problem" or "a big mess", you will create a different emotional state within you than if you call the issue "an opportunity" or "a challenge that will only make me better".

We Americans are reluctant to learn a foreign language of our own species, let alone another species. But imagine the possibilities. Imagine the access we would have to different perspectives, the things we might see through other eyes, the wisdom that surrounds us. We don't have to figure out everything by ourselves: there are intelligences other than our own, teachers all around us. Imagine how much less lonely the world would be.