Quotes About Language

la scienza discende dalla poesia, perché la metafora è alla base di ogni descrizione scientifica. Solo

Me maravillaba su habitual forma de expresarse, el tono melodioso de su voz y el modo en que sus palabras parecían apenas perturbar el aire.

Great secrets I sometimes wrote in Greek rather than Latin, but even in Greek. I could not say all the I thought.

His mind was full of the verbal instruments by which he could bring about his own despair.

What could these words mean to her? They must have sounded like old poetry. How could I expect her to grasp what I had said.

Again it was words that healed. Words and memory.

La poesía debería tomarse en pequeñas dosis. Nadie necesita poesía. Nadie necesita obligarse a leerla.

When one is immortal, she had written, one does not claim the touch of another in a desperate way. One is not fearful of losing it and so one does not seek to contain or restrict or describe it in language that must fail.

Didn't anyone stop to reflect that the so-called old people of today used to smoke pot, for heaven's sake, and wear bandannas tied around their heads and picket the White House? When Amanda chided her for saying that something was "cool" ("I hate it when the older generation tries to copy the younger," she had said), did she not realize that "cool" had been used in Abby's time, too, not to mention long before?

There was a certain liberation in talking to a man who didn't have a full grasp of English. She could tell him anything and half of it would fly right past him, especially if the words came tumbling out fast enough

Why Americans always begin inch by inch with what they say?

People tended to be very spendthrift with their language, Kate had noticed. They used a lot more words than they needed to. She

It is the language, maybe?" he asked. "I know the vocabulary, but still I am not capable to work the language the way I want to. There is no special word for 'you' when it is you that I am speaking to. In English there is only one 'you,' and I have to say the same 'you' to you that I would say to a stranger; I cannot express my closeness.

Sunday 11:05 AM Hi Kate I text you! Hi. U r home now? Spell things out, for heaven's sake. You're not some teenager. You are home now? No.

She had no patience with foreign accents.

People tended to be very spendthrift with their language, Kate had noticed. They used a lot more words than they needed to.

Next fall I'm taking his honors course in linguistic anthropology." "You think they don't teach foreign languages in San Diego?" he asked.

her sister's snuffly breaths across the room. Okay, then: think of Derek's proposal. He had no idea how much he'd asked of her, suggesting she give up her work with Dr. Brogan. The discovery of language had been her great epiphany in college.

There ought to be a while separate language, she thought, for words that are truer than other words - for perfect, absolute truth. It was the purest fact of her life: she did not understand him, and she never would.

Calling such people "mulattoes," from the Spanish word meaning "mule," insinuated that blacks and whites, though related, were close to being separate species, as a mule is the offspring of a horse and a donkey.

The lenses of telescopes and cameras can no more cover the breadth and scale of the visual array than language can cover the breadth and simultaneity of internal experience.

There is only a little violence here and there in the language, at the corner where eternity clips time.

How come you forget English when you swear?

Tally's journey from ugly to pretty to special and then out the other side is not just a physical journey. It's also a journey through language, as Tally takes on the slang of her various new cliques and then slowly comes to realize that when your body keeps changing, sometimes the way you speak is the only piece of you that you can hold on to.