Quotes About Language

He chooses his language for its rich canorousness rather than for intensity of meaning.

Babel werd nooit moe zijn verhalen te herschrijven. Hij zei dat er in een volzin ergens een soort hefboompje zat waarop je de hand kon leggen om er een heel kleine, maar precies goede draai mee te geven, niet te veel, niet te weinig, waarna alles op zijn plaats viel.

What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.

He unrolls names like a splendid carpet.

The exclamation point is a loud party-goer, demanding attention. Overdone, it can be annoying.

Well, all I can tell you is every Jewish man I come across is making a move on me." Not funny. By "curving" this language, the writers came up with a classic line. Who knows how many drafts it took? ELAINE: Well, something's goin' on here, 'cause every able-bodied Israelite in the county is drivin' pretty strong to the hoop.

CHARACTER background and language filtered through the AUTHOR'S heart, and rendered with craft on the PAGE = VOICE

For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.

Taking a single letter from the alphaber, he said, should make life simpler. I don't see why. Take the F from life and you have lie. It's adding a letter to simple that makes it simpler. Taking a letter from hoarder makes it harder.

A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption. A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

There was an old coddle so molly, He talked in a glot that was poly, His gaws were so gew That his laps became dew, And he ate only pops that were lolly.

Geep,' whuppled the parrot.

It is hard for me to believe that Miss Groby ever saw any work of literature from far enough away to know what it meant. She was forever climbing up the margins of books and crawling between their lines for the little gold of phrase, making marks with a pencil. As Palamides hunted the Questing Beast, she hunted the Figure of Speech. She hunted it through the clangorous halls of Shakespeare and through the green forests of Scott.

It was written all in O, or nearly so, and all the O's are gone, said Andrea. When coat is cat, and boat is bat, and goatherd looks like gathered, and booth is both, since both are bth, the reader's eye is bothered. And power is power, and zero zer, and, worst of all, a hero's her. The old man sighed as he said it. Anoon is ann, and moan is man. Andrea smiled as she said it. And shoe, Andreus said, is she. Ah, woe, the old man said, is we.

The language of Homer lay still further off. Imagine a twenty-first-century Texan reading Chaucer.

Native Americans also insist that "squaw" is a derogatory term. Some believe it derives from a French corruption of an Iroquois epithet for vagina, analogous to "cunt" in English. Others believe it meant "bitch" in Algonquian dialects spoken in Virginia.

Words are important—they can influence, and in some cases rationalize, policy.

Such titles differ from the titles of all other textbooks students read in high school or college. Chemistry books, for example, are called Chemistry or Principles of Chemistry, not Triumph of the Molecule.

Damn it all, MacMurrough, are you telling me you are an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort?' 'If you mean am I Irish, the answer is yes.

In the seventeenth century, Turkish concubines devised a secret method of communication with flowers by attaching a meaning to each blossom or plant. The fascination swept Europe and reached its zenith of popularity in Victorian England. In the language of flowers, the red rose symbolizes love, while the calla lily signifies a magnificent beauty. Together, a stunning marriage to the perfumer. - DB

Words strike the air and the mind, they act on the senses and on the soul.

La palabra golpea el aire y el espíritu, y obra sobre los sentidos y sobre el alma.

As the chant grew in volume she began to be conscious of the terrible potency of language, the sense that a name spoken is a summons and more than a summons, an act of creation, for a word shapes an idea, an idea shapes belief, and belief shapes the world.

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence, there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.—Confucius