Quotes About Language

And if literature is not the Bride and Bedfellow of Truth, what is she? 'Confound it all.' he cried, 'why say Bedfellow when one's already said Bride? Why not simply say what one means and save it?

Y el poema me parece que sólo es tu voz hablando.

Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today – that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past.

Shakespeare could not have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural saveragery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

Nothing should be named lest by so doing we change it

And for some reason she held the sentence suspended without meaning in her mind's ear, "…quite enough for everybody at present," she repeated. After all the foreign languages she had been hearing, it sounded to her pure English. What a lovely language, she thought, saying over to herself again the common place words…

So, when there is a strife of tongues, at some meeting, the chairman, to obtain unity, suggests that every one shall speak in French. Perhaps it is bad French; French may not contain the words that express the speaker's thoughts; nevertheless speaking French imposes some order, some uniformity.

But Lord! once one began mouthing words aloud, how silly they sounded!

The words we seek hang close to the tree. We come at dawn and find them sweet beneath the leaf.

After all, she may have thought, do words say everything? Can words say anything? Do not words destroy the symbol that lies beyond the reach of words?

The words of authority are corrupted by those who speak them.

Burada bir soluk al?p, sayfan?n kenar?na, Samuel Butler neden 'Ak?ll? erkekler kad?nlar hakk?nda ne düÅŸündüklerini asla söylemezler,' diyor, diye ekledim. Belli ki ak?ll? adamlar asla baÅŸka bir ÅŸey de söylemiyorlar.

Words belong to each other, although, of course, only a great writer knows that the word incarnadine belongs to multitudinous seas.

La lengua inglesa, que puede expresar los pensamientos de Hamlet y la tragedia de Lear, carece de palabras para describir el escalofrío y el dolor de cabeza.

Sin embargo, no sólo necesitamos un lenguaje nuevo más primitivo, más sensual, más obsceno, sino una nueva jerarquía de las pasiones.

she makes me feel as if language is miserably insufficient. broken.

Es curioso advertir que, en toda crisis, siempre aparece una frase incongruente que insiste en acudir en nuestro auxilio.

En la enfermedad, parece que las palabras poseen una cualidad mística. Captamos lo que está más allá de su significado superficial, deducimos instintivamente (...)

Porque una sabia disposición de la naturaleza ha determinado que nuestro espíritu moderno casi pueda prescindir del lenguaje: las expresiones más comunes bastan, ya que ninguna expresión basta; por eso la conversación más vulgar es a menudo la más poética, y la más poética es precisamente la que no se puede escribir. Por esas razones dejamos aquí un gran espacio en blanco, lo que es señal de que el espacio está repleto.

But if I find myself in company with other people, words at once make smoke rings - see how phrases at once begin to wreathe off my lips.

to say, Oh, yes, Frisk. I'll call him Frisk. She wanted even to say, Was

Kendisi tek bir ÅŸeyi deÄŸil, her ÅŸeyi söylemek istiyordu. An?n bask?s?, tela?? insana her zaman hedefini ÅŸa??rt?yordu. Sözcükler telaÅŸ ve heyecanla yanlara kaç?yor, istenilen hedefe ulaÅŸam?yordu. Ä°nsan, bedenin bu heyecanlar?n?, sözcüklerle nas?l anlatabilirdi? Aradaki boÅŸluÄŸu nas?l anlatabilirdi? Duyumsayan insan?n zihni deÄŸil, bedeni idi.

I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for someone to wear them.

For it is a curious fact that though human beings have such imperfect means of communication, that they can only say 'good to eat' when they mean 'beautiful' and the other way about, they will yet endure ridicule and misunderstanding rather than keep any experience to themselves.