Quotes About Language

It seems to me like a failure of language that experience fits into a regular sentence made up of ordinary words. It fits into one word. Experience.

The mass migration of the poorest of the poor to America is bad for the whole country, but it's fantastic for Democrats. Ask yourself: Which party benefits from illiterate non-English speakers who have absolutely no idea what they're voting for, but can be instructed to learn certain symbols?

I am Rose Howard and my first name has a homonym. To be accurate, it has a homophone, which is a word that's pronounced the same as another word, but spelled differently. My homophone name is Rows.

What's fun about homonyms is hearig a word in a sentence and suddenly realizing that it has a homonym or maybe two (or three, but that's so rare I don't often think about homonym quartets) and that you haven't thought of that homonym pair or trio before.

Some of the things I get teased about are following the rules and always talking about homonyms

Bop-u-top nop-o-bop-o-dop-yop kop-nop-o-wop-sop hop-o-wop top-o sop-pop-e-a-kop 'op-talk.

I am Rose Howard and my first name has a homonym. To be accurate, it has a homophone, which is a word that's pronounced the same as another word but spelled differently.

Clearing the Brie from someone's arteries?" I said. I thought Seth and Mommy were going to fall over laughing. "Debris is stuff that's blown into the street. And that's what they mean by arteries — streets.

Open the Koran, which is perfect in its every syllable

This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.

Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

His comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct.

I found our speech copious without order, and energetic without rules

If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

Grammar, which is the art of using words properly, comprises four parts: Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody.

This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare, that his drama is the mirrour of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious extasies, by reading human sentiments in human language; by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.

Who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since, while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand.

APHÆRESIS  (APHÆ'RESIS)   n.s.[   figure in grammarthat takes away a letter or syllable from the beginning of a word.

ACATALECTIC  (ACATALE'CTIC)   n.s.[  Gr.]A verse which has the compleat number of syllables, without defect or superfluity.

Shakespeare regarded more the series of ideas, than of words; and his language, not being designed for the reader's desk, was all that he desired it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the audience.

Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man's life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.