Quotes About Language

This is the difficulty with learning a language: not always knowing if words contain more than they say.

and confronting the civic hypocrites who put care in the language but seldom in the budget.

Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.

Grammar is a piano I play by ear.

Letter make words. Words make stories. And stories can be changed with strong enough magic.

Is 'vagina' suitable for use in a sonnet? I don't suppose so. A famous poet told me, 'Vagina's ugly.' Meaning, of course, the sound of it. In poems. Meanwhile he inserts his penis frequently into his verse, calling it seriously, 'My Penis'. It is short, I know, and dignified. I mean of course the sound of it. In poems.

Marion Quade, the only member of the class to take Pythagoras in her stride, was a favourite pupil, in the sense that a savage who understands a few words of the language of a shipwrecked sailor is a favourite savage.

Sharon and Kelly Osbourne. I love the way they put aside ther difference and united for a commom purpose: trying to figure out what the hell Ozzy was saying.

Chances are no one is speaking to you in some secret code that can only be cracked by an enigma machine.

You've been the rabbi here for thirty years and these guys who've never set foot here want to decide who should be rabbi or not. And to lead prayer in Hebrew for Jews who speak Arabic, they want you to write in French. So I say they're nuts.

by the time you've finished naming a thing, it has already changed and the name you gave it no longer defines it exactly...

Ceux qui disent que le S est un serpent ont un problème avec leur S...

Words of affection, howsoe'er express'd, The latest spoken still are deem'd the best.

We would gladly have listened to her (they said) if only she had spoken like a lady. But they are liars and the truth is not in them.

Good thing your cunt's so fucking hot." "Don't call it that." His lips twitched. "Good thing your vagina's so gosh-darned hot," he whispered. "Because I really, really want to stick my penis in it and have repeated intercourse, bringing us to a mutually satisfactory culmination of our desires. How's that sound?

It suffered and died in translation.

A thing named is a thing tamed.

It seems weird that an educational establishment would use the wrong spelling on purpose, but there you go.

His sentences are in homely English, and yet there is something Roman in the easy handling of clauses, and something Greek in their ascent from analogy to idea.

It delighted him that he could find no use of the word modern in Shakespeare that did not carry its load of contempt.

In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child.

words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.

Black culture and history as something worthy of study, and to replace the "n-word" with "Brother" and "Sister." You see, the "n-word" was not some reclamation of Black community; it was part of a process of dehumanization required by chattel slavery. We weren't human beings; we were n*****. I have not used the word since walking into M. Navies' class. I was 13 years old." - Melina Abdullah

All of us have our wires crossed and crisscrossed so many times it's impossible to untangle the mess. It really does seem like the entire human race might as well be conversing with hand gestures and grunts, for all the success we're having.