Quotes About Language

that language could but extol, not reproduce, the beauties of the sense.

Escribir bien casi supondría pensar bien, y esto no está muy lejos del obrar bien.

since for me speaking French is like speaking without saying anything somehow—with no responsibilities, the way we speak in a dream.

Bien écrire, c'est déjà presque bien penser, et il n'y a pas loin de là jusqu'à bien agir.

God is spirit, and above languages is language.

Great words, being worn out, do a poor job of expressing the extraordinary. This is better accomplished by using ordinary words to the uttermost extent of their meaning.

la palabra es enemiga de lo misterioso y cruel delatora de lo vulgar.

Aimer... aimer... Qu'est-ce que c'est? Qa manque de définition, ce mot-là. Was der eine hat, liebt der andere, comme nous Allemands disons proverbialment.

Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.

God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of Himself. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But

It does no good to use big words to talk about Christ. Since I seem incapable of talking about him in the language of a child, I have reached the point where I can scarcely talk about him at all. All my words fill me with shame.

God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of Himself.

For language to have meaning there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him.

to put words together in a such a way that they exercise a mysterious and vital reactivity among themselves, and so release their secret content of associations to produce in the reader an experience that enriches the depths of his spirit in a manner quite unique.

We put words between ourselves and things.

Music, oh, how faint, how weak, Language fades before thy spell! Why should Feeling ever speak, When thou canst breathe her soul so well?

Chotto, Kenichiro! Dozo, motto panukeiku.

No language meant no chance of co-opting them in to what their round and flaxen invaders were calling Salvation.

Japanese staff who claim not to know a word of English beyond "awesome" and "sucks", which for a vast range of human endeavour, actually, is more than enough…

She had heard all about excluded middles ; they were bad shit, to be avoided...

I still don't even know for sure what a tendril is.

But should Bortz have exfoliated the mere words so lushly, into such unnatural roses, under which whose red, scented dusk, dark history slithered unseen?

Names by themselves may be empty, but the act of naming.

staff who claim not to know a word of English beyond "awesome" and "sucks," which for a vast range of human endeavor, actually, is more than enough . . .