Quotes About Language

One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought!

I know all the swear words. I just don't use them. There are worse things in life than being called a Lady.

Human language is lit with animal life: we play cats-cradle or have hare-brained ideas; we speak of badgering, or outfoxing someone; to squirrel something away and to ferret it out.

Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation

Words are our life. We are human because we use language. So I think we are less human when we use less language.

We don't realize how much we create reality through language. If we say that life is hard, it will be hard.

As slippery as smooth grapes, words exploding in the light like dormant seeds waiting in the vaults of vocabulary, alive again, and giving life: once again the heart distills them.

What we need are poems that interrogate the world of pronouns, open up possibilities of language and life; forms of politics that support and encourage self-affirmation.

When I talk about doing affirmations, I mean consciously choosing words that will either help eliminate something from your life or help create something new in your life.

Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.

My wife wanted my children to have some Chinese culture and education. She believes the children need to learn two languages and two cultures.

I spend more time learning about Buddhism than English, which is why my English today is still bad.

Chinese sometimes is fuzzy, but its beauty lies in its fuzziness.

And he would say, "Y'all come when you can," which was of no substantial pith or import, but then he would add, "Be particular." Except he pronounced it "p'ticklar." Be particular. That is, without a doubt, the Best Advice Ever Given in the History of the Entire World.

The spiders, honeybees, yellow jackets, and mud daubers: these insects still speak - a language that is older than humans. The buffalo, elk, wolf, coyote -they still talk too. It's we, the people, who have forgotten how to listen. [Osage Spider Story, an Osage Legend, told by Archie Mason, Jr]

Metaphor is the literal language of the soul. Poets do not try "to think up metaphors." They are not interested in making up riddles for the rest of us to figure out. They think in metaphors.

I think language beautifully full of the poetry of immanent clarification of some small pinprick of what living might mean. Fuck. Why else would anyone care to spend a life writing sentences?

sometimes it is necessary for us all to pretend together that language can really mean.

Father-in-law comes to stay, goes to local church and returns saying he will spend the rest of his life translating New English Bible back into English.

classical Arabic, being the language of the Qur'an, has not changed at all in fourteen centuries, making the writings of the early Islamic scholars as accessible today as they were then.

In fact, for a period stretching over seven hundred years, the international language of science was Arabic. For this was the language of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, and thus the official language of the vast Islamic Empire that, by the early eighth century CE, stretched from India to Spain.

What we say is important for in most cases the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

I can still remember Pete Rose, on the top step of the dugout screaming, "Fuck you, Shakespeare.

I see words, I read them.