Quotes About Language

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Mark Twain

Hyperbole often reflects a culture's excesses and savagery or appetite.

Vulgarity is the crutch of the weak and the ignorant,'" I snapped. "But what the fuck did she know?

El amor no puede conservarse para siempre en tercera persona del pretérito perfecto.

Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.

The language of the poem is the language of particulars.

I did not think of language as the means to self-description. I thought of it as the door—a thousand opening doors!—past myself. I thought of it as the means to notice, to contemplate, to praise, and, thus, to come into power.

Poems must, of course, be written in emotional freedom. Moreover, poems are not language but the content of the language.

Language is rich, and malleable. It is a living, vibrant material, and every part of a poem works in conjunction with every other part - the content, the place, the diction, the rhythm, the tone-as well as the very sliding, floating, thumping, rapping sounds of it.

Every adjective and adverb is worth five cents. Every verb is worth fifty cents

from Emerson's journals. In the context, it is written in the past tense; changing the verb to present tense it reads: The poem is a confession of faith. Which is to say, the poem is not an exercise. It is not 'wordplay.' Whatever skill or beauty it has, in contains something beyond language devices, and has a purpose other than itself.

The labor of writing poems, of working with thought and emotion in the encasement (or is it the wings?) of language, is strange to nature, for we are first of all creatures of motion.

As a carpenter can make a gibbet as well as an altar, a writer can describe the world as trivial or exquisite, as material or as idea, as senseless or as purposeful. Words are wood.

I know a lot of fancy words. I tear them from my heart and my tongue. Then I pray.

In the act of writing the poem, I am obedient, and submissive. Insofar as one can, I put aside ego and vanity, and even intention. I listen. What I hear is almost a voice, almost a language. It is a second ocean, rising, singing into one's ear, or deep inside the ears, whispering in the recesses where one is less oneself than a part of some single indivisible community.

A poem that is composed without the sweet and correct formalities of language, which are what sets it apart from the dailiness of ordinary writing, is doomed. It will not fly. It will be raucous and sloppy—the work of an amateur.

is the author of many novels, picture books, story collections, and nonfiction books. Her New York Times number one bestselling Magic Tree House series has been translated into numerous languages around the world. Highly recommended by parents and educators everywhere, the series introduces young readers to different cultures and times in history, as well as to the world's legacy

Meaning 'by way of the anus'. 'Per Annum', with two n's, means 'yearly'. The correct answer to the question, 'What is the birthrate per anum?' is zero (one hopes).

The slang for the rectum is prison wallet.

Entomologists have a name for young flies, but it is an ugly name, an insult. Let's not use the word maggot. Let's use a pretty word. Let's use hacienda.

I like the term decedent. It's as though the man weren't dead but merely involved in some sort of protracted legal dispute.

Téléclitoridienne means simply "female of the distant clitoris," but it had a lovely, aristocratic ring to it—calling to mind a career woman in heels and sweater set, cabling reports from her home in Biarritz. At the very least, it had a nicer ring to it than "frigid.

The caption uses the scientific term for lip-licking: "lateral tongue protrusion.")

The Spanish for 'vacuum' is aspiradora.