Quotes About Language

Language is neither merely the field of expression, nor merely the means of expression, nor merely the two jointly. Thought and poesy never just use language to express themselves with its help; rather, thought and poesy are in themselves the originary, the essential, and therefore also the final speech that language speaks through the mouth of man.

Es kann sein, daß wir eines Tages aus unserer Alltäglichkeit herausrücken und in die Macht der Dichtung einrücken müssen, daß wir nie mehr so in die Alltäglichkeit zurückkehren, wie wir sie verlassen haben.

In its essence, language is not the utterance of an organism; nor is it the expression of a living thing. Nor can it ever be thought in an essentially correct way in terms of its symbolic character, perhaps not even in terms of the character of signification. Language is the clearing-concealing advent of Being itself.

On ne peut entreprendre de définir l'être sans tomber dans cette absurdité: car on ne peut définir un mot sans commencer par celui-ci, c'est, soit qu'on l'exprime ou qu'on le sous-entende. Donc pour définir l'être, il faudrait dire c'est, et ainsi employer le mot défini dans sa définition.

Folks whose noses will still smell the day after tomorrow, and who still have on their tongues the day before yesterday, behave like ones who had known and configured the "new actuality.

For words and language are not wrappings in which things are packed for the commerce of those who write and speak. It is in words and language that things first come into being and are.

How many Germans live who speak their mother tongue effortlessly and yet are unable to understand Kant's Critique of Pure Reason or one of Hölderlin's hymns! Hence whoever has mastered the Greek language, or has some acquaintance with it by accident or choice, possess not the least proof thereby that he is able to think according to the thought of a Greek thinker.

But even assuming this: Language would be actually spoken according to all of its directions and possibilities, and were the thrust of an earthquake now immediately to take place so that the whole community was numbed mute by fear, would language then cease to be?

Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells.

man's Being, is 'defined' as the ???? ????? ????—as that living thing whose Being is essentially determined by the potentiality for discourse.

Der Mensch gebärdet sich, als sei er Bildner und Meister der Sprache, während doch sie die Herrin des Menschen bleibt.

Everything has always already been said. And yet this same possesses, as its inner truth, the inexhaustable wealth of what is on every day as if that day were its first.

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.

And of course the word love has many shades of meaning, as do many, many of the words in our living, breathing language

Ah, those eyes, he said. They can speak volumes, but sometimes even I cannot translate the language. And we never did invent enough signs for deeper thoughts and feelings.

He wished someone in the course of history had thought of striking that word and all its derivatives from the English Language - happy, happier, happiest, happiness. What the devil did the words really mean anyway? Why not just the word pleasure, which was far more... well, pleasant.

Chaldean roots which are surely to be traced in the Cornish branch of the great Celtic speech.

He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.

As you are aware, E is the most common letter in the English alphabet

Recuerda usted lo que afirma Darwin sobre la música? Sostiene que la capacidad de producirla y de apreciarla existió en la raza humana mucho antes de que esta alcanzase la facultad de la palabra. Quizá sea esta la razón de que influya en nosotros de una manera tan sutil. Existen en nuestras almas confusos recuerdos de aquellos siglos nebulosos en que el mundo se hallaba en su niñez.

Recuerda usted lo que Darwin ha dicho acerca de la música? En su opinión, la facultad de producir y apreciar una armonía data en la raza humana de mayor antigüedad que el uso del lenguaje. Acaso sea ésta la causa de que influya en nosotros de manera tan sutil. Perviven en nuestras almas recuerdos borrosos de aquellos siglos en que el mundo se hallaba aún en su niñez

An emotionally maladjusted species , we have the uncanny power of turning every blessing, including language, into a curse.

In my youth I regarded the Universe as an open book, printed in the language of physical equations, whereas now it appears to me as a text written in invisible ink, of which, in our rare moments of grace, we are able to decipher a small fragment.

while language facilitates communication within the group, it also crystallises cultural differences, and actually heightens the barriers between groups.