Quotes About Language

Mistress: Something between a mister and a mattress.

The pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented.

Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentlemen.

Men who would letterspace lower case would shag sheep.

The only man I knew who could make a curse sound like a caress.

It is through symbols that man consciously or unconsciously lives, works and has his being.

Speech is the best show a man puts on.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

Words must surely be counted among the most powerful drugs man ever invented.

Ten doors are opened if one door be shut: the finger is the interpreter of the dumb man's tongue.

Every man prays in his own language.

Correct spelling, indeed, is one of the arts that are far more esteemed by schoolma'ams than by practical men, neck-deep in the heat and agony of the world.

There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.

Speech has been given to man to disguise his thoughts.

A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.

Man lives in a world of meaning.

Language is the main instrument of man's refusal to accept the world as it is.

The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.

I beg your pardon? Robson says. One thing Waterhouse likes about these Brits is that when they don't know what the hell you're talking about, they are at least open to the possibility that it might be their fault.

What are letters?" "Kinda like mediaglyphics except they're all black, and they're tiny, they don't move, they're old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use 'em to make short words for long words.

Even the word 'science' comes from an Indo-European root meaning 'to cut' or 'to separate.' The same root led to the word 'shit,' which of course means to separate living flesh from nonliving waste. The same root gave us 'scythe' and 'scissors' and 'schism,' which have obvious connections to the concept of separation.

Entire sections of them simply cannot be translated - the characters are legible and well-known, but when put together they do not say anything that leaves an imprint on the modern mind. Like instructions for programming a VCR.

Princess Nell had to reconstruct them, learning the language, which was extremely pithy and made heavy use of parentheses.

You bent my words again," says Goto Dengo. "You spoke crooked words and I straightened them