Quotes About Language

These were voted as the three sweetest words in the English language: 1. I love you. 2. Dinner is served. 3. All is forgiven. 4. Sleep 'til noon. 5. Keep the change. 6. Here's that five.

Words are peculiar that way, full of overtones and memories and semantic subtleties. It's an old game to pick the most beautiful, or the most unpleasant, words in the language. Playing it, some people have chosen "cellar door" as the most beautiful combination of sounds, with liquid consonants and soft vowels.

A good story is being told of a prominent credit man for a New York hat house which runs thus: A Philadelphia magazine having offered a prize for the best answer to the question "Which are the four sweetest words in the English language?" our friend the credit man secured the prize by sending in a slip on which he wrote these words: "Enclosed please find check."

The tongue rolles there where the teeth aketh.

The word is mightier than the sword.

Words — so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them!

I think it's important and I think it's true that our life experience is going to be about our attitude, our thoughts, our beliefs, our speech and our actions. We can transform our life experience simply by changing our language.

Next to the semi-colon, quotation marks seem to be the chief butts of reformatory ardor.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

It will be seen that the Infinitive is a kind of noun with certain features of the verb, especially that of taking an object (when the verb is Transitive) and adverbial qualifiers. In short, the Infinitive is a Verb-Noun.

Since the Object of a verb in the active voice becomes the Subject of the passive form, it follows that only Transitive Verbs can be used in the Passive Voice, because an Intransitive Verb has no Object.

For most of us, our language changes under different circumstances. We talked differently in formal situations them with family and friends. We called this form of language doggerel.Think about this: with adults we usually use ten to eleven words per sentence, but with dogs it's four.

The Egyptian word Pir-em-us meant to them something of great vertical height. From this the Greek form Pyramis, or the plural Pyramides was formed.

but if you do not even understand what words say how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?

if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?

We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted.

Words and form! We have a totally clear view of the world when we're fourteen years old, maybe sooner. But then we need another fifty years in order to create a language that can express those impressions. And in the mean time, of course, they've faded away.

Restatement is like marching in place. It does not have forward movement, but it is part of the parade. It is saying the same thing in different words.

Like a trained surgeon who is careful where he cuts, parents, too, need to become skilled in the use of words. Because words are like knives. They can inflict, if not physical, many painful emotional wounds.

Where do we start if we are to improve communication with children? By examining how we respond. We even know the words. We heard our parents use them with guests and strangers. It is a language that is protective of feelings, not critical of behavior. What

The homeland is a language and exile is a metaphor

George W. Bush, the former US president, is reputed to have complained that the problem with the French is that they do not have a word for entrepreneurship in their language.

Words belong to those who use them only till someone else steals them back.

The sage does not become trapped in semantics, does not mistake map for territory, but rather "opens things up to the light of Heaven" by flowing with the words, by playing with the words. Once attuned to this flow, the sage need make no special effort to "illumine," for language does it by itself, spontaneously. Language spills over.