Quotes About Language

degradó cuando aquéllos, que recibían salarios de acuerdo al número de palabras que usaban en sus peroratas, empezaron a hinchar sus discursos para ganar más.

Esto ha llevado a algunos, tomando sus palabras al pie de la letra, a sostener que Madame Bovary es una novela donde no ocurre nada, salvo lenguaje. No es así; en Madame Bovary ocurren tantas cosas como en una novela de aventuras —matrimonios, adulterios, bailes, viajes, paseos, estafas, enfermedades, espectáculos, un suicidio—, sólo que se trata por lo general de aventuras mezquinas.

La mujer sonreía teatralmente y se había lanzado a hablar sin pausas. En el chisporroteo de palabras, las formulas de cortesía que Alberto había escuchado en su infancia aparecían como en caricatura, condimentadas con adjetivos lujosos y gratuitos, y a ratos comprendía que lo trataban de señor y de don y lo interrogaban sin esperar su respuesta. Se halló envuelto en una costra verbal, en un laberinto sonoro.

la predisposición para los idiomas es tan misteriosa como la de ciertas personas para las matemáticas o la música, no tiene nada que ver con la inteligencia ni el conocimiento. Es algo aparte, un don que algunos poseen y otros no.

suddenly I was a kid in the hall standing outside my locker about to head to Math. But that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth. That's when all the real things were said.

But that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth. That's when all the real things were said.

It was astounding how a woman, when she struck marital gold, procured not just a new wardrobe and new friends but a new voice straight out of a 1930s gramophone (brittle, mono-stereo) and a vocabulary that reliably included laze, season, and terribly sorry.

But that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth.

He was one of those people you initially believed had a foreign accent, though it turned out he was American, only spoke delicately, as if every word were something to be carefully dusted off and held up to the light.

I was aware of how shoddily stitched together the words were—suddenly I was a kid in the hall standing outside my locker about to head to Math. But that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth. That's when all the real things were said.

that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth. That's when all the real things were said.

The symbiotic relationship between reading and writing is a cornerstone of our individual intellectual journey and our educational system. We write as an act of self-expression. We read because language renders unto us the vitality of real and imagined experience.

like textual glossolalia.

Anh yeu em, or "I Love You.

The covenant language in the Bible is not cold, legal language, but relational language.

Maybe we should be glad, finally, that the word can't go where the heart can, not completely. It's freeing, to think there's always an aspect of us outside the grasp of speech, the common stuff of language. Love is common, too, absolutely so—and yet our words for it only point to it; they do not describe it. They are indicators of something immense: the word love is merely a sign that means something like This way to the mountain.

we must refuse to speak in sanitized clinical euphemisms like calling adulteries "affairs," fornication "dating," and perverts "partners" because God uses frank words for deplorable sin so we will feel its sickness without anesthesia.

The word metaphor means carrying something from one place to another, and it comes from the Greek words meta (which means from one place to another) and ferein (which means to carry), and it is when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor.

quod erat demonstrandum, which is Latin for which is the thing that was going to be proved, which means thus it is proved.

Los niños de mi colegio son estúpidos. Pero se supone que no he de llamarlos estúpidos, ni siquiera aunque sea eso lo que son. Se supone que he de decir que tienen dificultades de aprendizaje o que tienen necesidades especiales.

Mad as a fucking hatter. Jesus

when you describe something by using a word for something that it isn't. This means that the word metaphor is a metaphor. I

But sometimes it is fun not knowing what the words mean because you can look them up in a dictionary...

Nemám rád normální romány. V normálních románech lidi Ã…â"¢íkají vÄ›ci jako: "Jsem protkána železem, stÃ…â"¢íbrem a žilkami usazenin. Nedokážu se sevÃ…â"¢ít v tvrdou pÄ›st, již zatínají ti, kteÃ…â"¢í jsou nezávislí." Co to znamená? Nevím. Neví to ani táta. Ani Siobhan, ani pan Jeavons. Ptal jsem se jich.