Quotes About Language

A picture, it is said, is worth a thousand words, but cannot a few well-spoken words convey as many pictures?

I wish the first word I ever said was the word "quote" so right before I die I could say "unquote."

Let's have some new clichés!

Talleyrand, talking of a man who dealt in nothing but quotations, said, "That man has a mind of inverted commas."

But further, in order to embellish it with flowers of language and gems of thought, it is not necessary for this ornamentation to be spread evenly over the entire speech, but it must be so distributed that there may be brilliant jewels placed at various points as a sort of decoration.

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people's throats—and one always secretes too much jelly.

I think I'll believe in Gosh instead of God. If you don't believe in Gosh too, you'll be darned to heck.

Sarcasm: It's how I hug.

I'm fluent in bad puns and sarcasm.

Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.

It were vain for me to endeavor to interrupt the Silence. She cannot be done into English. For six thousand years men have translated her with what fidelity belonged to each, and still she is little better than a sealed book. A man may run on confidently for a time, thinking he has her under his thumb, and shall one day exhaust her, but he too must at last be silent...

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place

In the beginning there was the Word and not the talk, and in the end there won´t be the propaganda but again the Word

Es gibt nur zwei verbale Tendenzen: die mathematischen Lehrsätze und das Wort als Kunst. Alles andere ist Geschäftssprache, Bierbestellung.

Lies in meinen Augen, was ich dir nicht alles sagen kann.

I have crossed an ocean I have lost my tongue from the root of the old one a new one has sprung

whatever tongue we speak the old ghost asserts itself in dusky echoes

Despite no education, Mrs. Finn always is more in charge of word meanings than I am. She is especially in charge of Good and Bad. My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next.

The wrong word is like a lie jammed inside the story.

To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.

Natural, xingar a mãe de uma pessoa não vale nada, porque todo mundo vê logo que a gente não tem intenção de maltratar ninguém. Um ditério sem importância.

A palavra não foi feita para enfeitar, brilhar como ouro falso. A palavra foi feita para dizer.