Quotes About Language

De Melkweg,' fluisterde hij in zichzelf... Marika stond naast hem en keek ook omhoog. Ze hief een arm op en volgde het helder oplichtende spoor. 'Sak be,' zei ze in de taal van de Maya's.

you say carjacking, i say borrowing.

Even the word salary came from the Latin salarium, which meant the amount a soldier was paid to buy salt.

We youths say "like" all the time because we mistrust reality.

We youths say "like" all the time because we mistrust reality. It takes a certain commitment to say something is. Inserting "like" gives you a bit more running room.

Anxiety. Dissociation. The words came easily. We attach them to processes, they migrate to the people themselves, and we think: Now I understand. But we don't, and the words themselves interdict further attempts to do so. Maryanne

However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

Meme Warfare 101: the meme hovers above the syntactical model that has limited man's evolution and expansiveness due to the restrictions of language. The meme introduces that which defies the restrictions of language and cuts to the psycho-emotional core of the individual.

The semi-colon is a burp, a hiccup. It's a drunk staggering out of the saloon at 2 a.m., grabbing your lapels on the way and asking you to listen to one more story.

We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth …We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.

If letters had eyebrows, these would be arched.

When one is highly alert to language, then nearly everything begs to be a poem.

I hate women because they have brought into the currency of our language such expressions as "all righty" and "yes indeedy" and hundreds of others.

Red Barber announces the Dodger games and he uses those expressions—picked them up down South…. "Tearing up the pea patch" means going on a rampage; "sitting in the catbird seat" means sitting pretty, like a batter with three balls and no strikes on him.

He was one of those language teachers who rely heavily on mnemonics. ("Agathon. Do you know how I remember that word? 'Agatha Christie writes good mysteries.' Ã¢â'¬Â) Henry's look of contempt was indescribable. The rest of us were silent and humiliated

What about school then? Favorite subjects?" "History, I guess. English too," I said when he didn't answer. "But English is going to be really boring for the next six weeks?we stopped doing literature and went back to the grammar book and now we're diagramming sentences.

What? said Charles, interrupting him. What did you say? You said Julian's gone? I must compliment you, young man, on your grasp of the English language.

When you're worried about something," said Henry abruptly, "have you ever tried thinking in a different language?

For that you should read the original. In very great poetry the music often comes through even when one doesn't know language. I loved Dante passionately before I knew a word of Italian.

One's thought patterns become different...when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation.

One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words." — JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Avoid dull facts; create memorable images; translate every issue into people's lives; use simple, everyday language; never use big words when small words will do. Simplify the concept that "we are trying to construct a more inclusive society" into "we are going to make a country in which no one is left out.

He cannot speak clearly if his words must be strained through a Congressional gag.