Quotes About Language

Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.

You get so worked up and flowery! You sound as if you were quoting something all the time!

He could go back and take her in his arms. If only he knew how to do this. But they had lost the language of their affections, they had lost the style.

La gente no suele saber aplicar la filosofía. Dudo de que ni siquiera los filósofos sepan hacerlo. —La gente puede usar conceptos morales lo mismo que tú has usado ahora el concepto de la verdad para convencerme. Cualquiera puede hacerlo. —Quizá. Pero creo que la filosofía moral es algo que resulta desesperanzadamente personal. No puede ser comunicado. «Si un león hablase, no podríamos comprenderlo», ha dicho Wittgenstein.

I was not, except in some very broken-down sense of that ambiguous term, a love child. I was a word child.

Magic besieges the religious life and men yearn to speak the language of angels.

But what words exactly did he use? People who aren't writers never describe things exactly .

If you want to eat spaghetti you must use your teeth.' Wittgenstein. I don't think Wittgenstein really said any of those things you say he said!

I can decide what to say but not what the words mean which I have said. I can decide what to do but I am not master of the significance of my act.

Do anything you like . . . only don't say the word 'never'. I should die of that word.

Words may mislead us (...) since words are often stable while concepts alter (...)

How little perhaps can words convey except in the hands of a genius.

There is also the evident dualism between those who know (the jargon, made of discourse etc.) and those who do not, who are not really using language but being used by it.

The activity of translating, which had seemed the plainest thing in the world, turned out to be an act so complex and extraordinary that it was puzzling to see how any human being could perform it.

Even Wittgenstein did not think that we would ever reach the moon.

The fact that you use the term cunt in the same breath as sexist, shows that you display the same muddled, fucked-up thinking oan this issue as you do oan everything else.

Ah fuckin hate the way some American cunts call lassies cunts. Fuckin offensive, that shite.

We don't really communicate […]. We talk all right, talk in that strange language we've evolved for the purposes of avoiding communication. That non-language we've created. Perhaps it's a sign that civilisation is regressing. Something is anyway.

Fuck that: take shagging n peeve oot ay the equation n yir left wi the sqare root ay swee fuck all!

These foreign cunts've goat trouble wi the Queen's fuckin English, ken.

Buckin' is one ay Na Na's favourite words likesay, along wi 'pish'. Naebody says 'pish' like Na Na. She sortay drags oot the sssshhh, it's likesay, ye kin see the steam rising oaf the yellay jet as it hits the white porcelain, ken?

This cunt's allergic tae water, especially if ye mix it wi fucking soap.

Vincent did not know how to express his feelings in words. He knew how to paint them. However, one cannot paint the farewell.

Sa svakim novim jezikom ?ovek dobija nov život; jer ako znamo jezik jedne strane zemlje, možemo da upoznamo njenu književnost, njeno ponašanje i obi?aje...