Quotes About Language

If we want to change our lives and shape our destiny, we need to consciously select the words we're going to use, and we need to constantly strive to expand our level of choice.

If an assemblage of words you're using is creating states that disempower you, get rid of those words and replace them with those that empower you!

Las palabras forman el hilo con el que tejemos nuestras experiencias. ALDOUS HUXLEY

Para controlar conscientemente nuestras vidas, tenemos que evaluar y mejorar conscientemente nuestro vocabulario, para asegurarnos que nos empuje en la dirección que deseamos en lugar de aquella que queremos evitar.

No;—nobody in England ever is taught anything but Latin and Greek,—with this singular result, that after ten or a dozen years of learning not one in twenty knows a word of either language. That is our English idea of education. In after life a little French may be picked up, from necessity; but it is French of the very worst kind. My wonder is that Englishman can hold their own in the world at all.

Cuando un hombre desea utilizar palabras ardientes, debe usarlas mientras siguen en llamas.

She read on and on, enraptured. She could not understand half, but it excited her oddly, like words in a foreign language sung to a beautiful air. She followed the poem vaguely as she followed the Latin in her missal, guessing, inventing meanings for herself, intoxicated by the mere rush of words. And yet she felt she did understand, not with her eyes or her brain, but with some faculty she did not even know she possessed.

And it was as if all these details were connected, that they were like the separate letters of a word in an unknown language and that, if only she could understand the word, she would understand everything.

All writing is pigshit.

It is the very reason-for-being of language and grammar that I unhinge.

All those who have vantage points in their spirit... ; all those who are masters of their language; all those for whom words have a meaning; all those for whom there exist sublimities in the soul and currents of thought; all those who are the spirit of the times, and have named these currents of thought -- and I am thinking of their precise works, of that automatic grinding that delivers their spirit to the winds -- are pigs.

much more than by its army, its administration, its institutions, and its police, society is held together with spells.

A alma dos homens não está nas palavras. Amamo-nos mais quando não escrevemos porque todas as palavras são uma mentira. Quando falamos traímos a nossa alma. Bastava olharmo-nos. Sentirmos coisas, mas só o esforço que se faz para as exprimir já é uma traição.

Words change meaning over time, and often in unpredictable ways. Queen Anne is said (probably apocryphally) to have commented about Sir Christopher Wren's architecture at St. Paul's Cathedral that it was awful, artificial, and amusing—by which she meant that it was awe-inspiring, highly artistic, and thought-provoking.

For example, the ambiguities in a contract will be construed against the party that drafted the document (contra proferentem).

At the limit it could be said that every speaking being has a personal language of his own, that is his own particular way of thinking and feeling. Culture, at its various levels, unifies in a series of strata, to the extent that they come into contact with each other, a greater or lesser number of individuals who understand each other's mode of expression to varying degrees, etc.

Un traduttore qualificato dovrebbe essere in grado non solo di tradurre letteralmente, ma di tradurre i termini, anche concettuali, di una determinata cultura nazionale nei termini di un'altra cultura nazionale, cioè un tale traduttore dovrebbe conoscere criticamente due civiltà ed essere in grado di far conoscere l'una all'altra servendosi del linguaggio storicamente determinato di quella civiltà alla quale fornisce il materiale d'informazione.

Me di cuenta de que las palabras que suelo decir con facilidad, las que me salen solas cuando hablo, son solo balbuceos de lo que soy.

Over the previous 150 years, the border areas of Eupen and St Vith had moved back and forth between France, Prussia, Belgium and Germany, depending on the fortunes of war. In the Belgian elections of April 1939, more than 45 per cent of those in the mainly German-speaking 'eastern cantons' voted for the Heimattreue Front which wanted the area reincorporated into the Reich. But

The ubiquitous initials LSR for Luftschutzraum, or air-raid shelter, were said to stand for 'Lernt schnell Russisc': 'Learn Russian quickly'.

Nothing, however, stopped the conquerors' resolution to crush every aspect of Basque nationalism. The Basque flag, the ikurriña, was outlawed and use of the Basque language suppressed. Threatening notices were displayed: 'If you are Spanish, speak Spanish.' Regionalist feelings in any form were portrayed as the cancer of the Spanish body politic.

Birdy never felt artistic inclination when armed with a marking implement. What came to her were words, always words, commentary and criticism and correction and simple vocabulary curios; she scratched a few of them on the smooth red wall.

They are likely to have less educated parents who own fewer books and talk to them less from the time they are infants—a gap that's been estimated at 30 million words by the time they start kindergarten.

There is something of value in trying to put the world into words.