Quotes About Language

Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.

I said the thing which was not. (For they have no word in their language to express lying or falsehood.)

A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of style.

We read off the ancient Hebrew words, with no idea of what they might mean, and the congregation responds with more words that they don't understand either. We are gathered together on a Saturday morning to speak gibberish to each other, and you would think, in these godless times, that the experience would be empty, but somehow it isn't.

That first pregnancy is a long sea journey to a country where you don't know the language, where land is in sight for such a long time that after a while it's just the horizon - and then one day birds wheel over that dark shape and it's suddenly close, and all you can do is hope like hell that you've had the right shots.

Our Company was participating in a management seminar in which we were taught a strategy that goes by the unlovely name of 'reverse your buts.' I did not make this up! It works like this: Maybe you're thinking, 'I love you, but you're driving me crazy.' Instead, try thinking, 'You're driving me crazy, but I love you." Isn't it amazing how different that feels?

Love, when spelled backwards and read phonetically, reads evil

I think buddy is man talk for sweetie .

Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true.

Is thyselves even a word?

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' was possibly too rude. 'It's in the book,' I said. He didn't hit me.

Although the spoken word is over six million years old

le parole esprimono meno bene del silenzio, in questi momenti, ciò che il cuore vuole dire.

The best argument in favor of the universality of natural language expressive power is the possibility of translation. The best argument against universality is the impossibility of translation.

Actions do not betray, but language is filled with the danger of betrayal at any instant. This quality is what makes language both infinitely beautiful and infinitely frightening.

If I had my life over again[, ] I'd have thought more about words. And thought about them earlier.

How could you determine a man's intention if you didn't speak his language or share his beliefs? She'd happily embarked on a study of ancient Egyptian religion but had no curiosity about Islam, which seemed an amalgam of oddities and borrowings. She felt with conviction what she'd written home more than once--that Egypt would be an exquisite country if not for the Egyptians who lived there.

La Medicina es el arte de acompañar con palabras griegas al sepulcro.

el viaje de la lectura pasa muchas veces por terrenos difíciles que exigen capacidad de emoción inteligente, deseos de comprender al otro y de acercarse a u lenguaje distinto al de nuestras tiranías cotidianas.

En otras palabras, vive prisionero de su casticismo, completamente poseído por su lenguaje de camarero español, por su terrible habla tradicional y desacomplejada, que parece que tenga que ser la única normal, la única eternamente auténtica de aquí a cien mil leguas a la redonda.

En una descripción bien hecha, aunque sea obscena, hay algo moral: la voluntad de decir la verdad. Cuando se usa el lenguaje para simplemente obtener un efecto, para no ir más allá de lo que nos está permitido, se incurre paradójicamente en un acto inmoral.

execution of civilians, collective rape of women. The Israeli general staff, moreover, used the Hebrew word tihur, meaning 'cleaning' or 'purification', more than 40 years before the concept of 'ethnic cleansing' was coined at the time of the wars in the former Yugoslavia.14

the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) appeared half a century later than in Berlin, Vienna or Paris, and took on a national form: secularization and modernization gave birth to a Jewish nation whose pillars were the Yiddish language and culture.