Quotes About Language

She was haunted by the ghosts of phrases. She gave herself up to a sensual delight in the combinations of words. She sought them in the pages of her favorite authors.

Nothing should be named lest by doing so we change it. Let it exist, this bank, this beauty, and I, for one instant, steeped in pleasure.

He was attaching meanings to words of a symbolical kind. A serious symptom, to be noted on the card.

Ha fontolóra vesszük a dolgot, ki tudja, nem ezt gondolta-e talán: vajon valóban mindent ki tudnak mondani a szavak? Mondanak egyáltalán valamit? Nem rombolják-e le a valóságot, mely egyszer?en meghaladja a teljesítÅ'képességüket?

The number of books in the world is infinite, and one is forced to glimpse and nod and move on after a moment of talk, a flash of understanding, as, in the street outside, one catches a word in passing and from a chance phrase fabricates a lifetime.

I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.

The square root of I is I.

All religions are based on obsolete terminology.

I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.

I liked, as I like still, to make words look self-conscious and foolish, to bind them by mock marriage of a pun, to turn them inside out, to come upon them unawares. What is this jest in majesty? This ass in passion? How do god and devil combine to form a live dog?

the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense–-

We think not in words but in shadows of words.

I don't think in any language. I think in images. I don't believe that people think in languages. They don't move their lips when they think. It is only a certain type of illiterate person who moves his lips as he reads or ruminates. No, I think in images, and now and then a Russian phrase or an English phrase will form with the foam of the brainwave, but that's about all.

If his Russian was music, his English was murder.

realidade (uma das poucas palavras que só fazem sentido entre aspas)

Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!

Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words.

To be quite candid — and what I am going to say now is something I have never said before, and I hope that it provokes a salutary chill — I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.

But they are practically brother and sister, ejaculated Marina, thinking as many stupid people do that practically works both ways - reducing the truth of a statement and making a truism sound like the truth.

Stilletos of a frozen stillicide [...] In the lovely line heading this comment the reader should note the last word. My dictionary defines it as 'a succession of drops falling from the eaves, eavesdrop, cavesdrop.' I remember having encountered it for the first time in a poem by Thomas Hardy. The bright frost has eternalized the bright eavesdrop.

and in the end the logical thing would be to give up and I would give up if I were laboring for a reader today, but as there is in the world not a single human who can speak my language; or, more simply, not a single human who can speak; or, even more simply, not a single human; I must think only of myself, of that force which urges me to express myself. I repeat: there is something I know, there is something I know, there is something...

If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one's own writings in translation.

Lolita, luce della mia vita, fuoco dei miei lombi. Mio peccato, anima mia. Lo-li-ta: la punta della lingua compie un percorso di tre passi sul palato per battere, al terzo, contro i denti. Lo. Li. Ta.

Tropes are the dreams of speech.