Quotes About Language

Often, this requires a shift in language from "You are wrong here" to "There's something that needs to change." It is a completely different physical, cognitive, emotional, and spiritual experience when someone is on your side and helping you through the hurdle rather than pointing out your participation in the problem.

Shame derives its power from being unspeakable. That's why it loves perfectionists- it's so easy to keep us quiet. If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we've basically cut it off at the knees. Shame hates having words wrapped around it. If we speak shame, it begins to wither. Just the way the light was deadly for the gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.

If we cultivate enough awareness about shame to name it and speak to it, we've basically cut it off at the knees. Just the way exposure to light was deadly for the Gremlins, language and story bring light to shame and destroy it.

Heart is sea, language is shore. Whatever sea includes, will hit the shore. — RUMI

What is so frightening about [writing]? I still don't know. Perhaps it's the horrible knowledge that no matter how well you write, the resultant product will never correlate exactly to the truth, will never arrive with quite the melodious voice you hear in the acoustic cavity of your mind.

I do see the poet as someone whose role it is to push back against anti-intellectualism, anti-activism, and passivity in general. The purpose of this pushing back is to show that there are always infinite sides to a story, amazing unimagined perspectives on any narrative, and no limit to how weird and wild and unexpected our language and its meanings can get.

It seems unlikely that so much literature could be made from twenty-six letters. Doesn't it seem it could all be boiled down to one sentence?

No man can adequately reach and explain a single word of God with all his words

Words, like anything else used too often, soon depreciate in value, lose their edge, and cease to bite into our lives. When phrases, such as unconditional love, trip too easily off the tongue, the speaker's ego may experience a temporary rush of exhilaration using an in salvation slogan, but his heart remains unchanged.

As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears from the Duchess, some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly to Mother Shipton's desire to cut somebody's heart out, to the repeated statements of the Duchess that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward.

That's the trouble about regulated ideas: the phrases are never original, the same words keep recurring.

And Mademoiselle Dupre, finding everything unintelligible, was completely reassured: such good-bys were normal among the unfortunate English-speakers, an uncouth language, it affected their minds; or perhaps, poor people, it was not given to all languages to perform with the precision, the clarity, the grace of a French epigram.

Estrella realized words could become as excruciating as rusted nails piercing the heels of her bare feet.

Photography is the only language understood in all parts of the world, and bridging all nations and cultures, it links the family of man. Independent of political influence - where people are free - it reflects truthfully life and events, allows us to share in the hopes and despair of others, and illuminates political and social conditions. We become the eye-witnesses of the humanity and inhumanity of mankind.

The term political correctness has always appalled me, reminding me of Orwell's Thought Police and fascist regimes.

What was that?' Wallander said. [Linda] 'Nothing.' 'That's funny. I could have sworn you were swearing.' 'I didn't say anything.' 'I have a strange daughter,' Wallander said to Lindman. 'She curses without even knowing it.'

Wallander smiled to hear how he too used to speak, before his move to Ystad had changed his dialect.

Siempre me reafirmaba en la idea de que el ser humano es un ser narrante. Más Homo narrans que Homo sapiens.

Seward would inspire a cow with statesmanship if she understood our language.

A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

It's too late to be studying Hebrew; it's more important to understand even the slang of today.

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have.

Where shall we look for standard English but to the words of a standard man?