Quotes About Language

Anyone who has had anything to do with the higher diplomacy is aware that diplomatic language stands in a class by itself. It is a language specially designed to deceive the chance listener.

And when a woman says "Oh!" like that, it means all the bad words she'd love to say if she only knew them.

Somebody had scribbled on the walls of the stairwell with a black crayon. The scribbler had a dirty mind but wasn't much of a speller.

In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?

The morning is full of storm in the heart of summer. The clouds travel like white handkerchiefs of goodbye, the wind, travelling, waving them in its hands. The numberless heart of the wind beating above our loving silence. Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees like a language full of wars and songs.

You can say anything you want, yessir, but it's the words that sing, they soar and descend...I bow to them...I love them, I cling to them, I run them down, I bite into them, I melt them down...I love words so much...The unexpected ones...The ones I wait for greedily or stalk until, suddenly, they drop...

Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of Díaz Casanueva; in that language in which Joaquín Edwards preaches nationalism. My discourse is profound; I speak with eloquence and seduction; my words, more than from me, issue from the warm nights, from the many solitary nights on the Red Sea, and when the tiny dancer puts her arm around my neck, I understand that she understands. Magnificent language!

Como se acuerda con los pajaros la traduccion de sus idiomas? How is the translation of their languages Arranged with the birds?

Some poems survive it to become poems in another language," he argued, "but others refuse to live in any language but their own, in which case the translator can manage no more than a reproduction, an effigy, of the original.

We all arrive by different streets, by unequal languages, at Silence.

The numberless heart of the wind beating above our loving silence. Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees like a language full of wars and songs.

a los bárbaros se les caían de las botas, de las barbas, de los yelmos, de las herraduras, como piedrecitas, las palabras luminosas que se quedaron aquí resplandecientes... el idioma. Salimos perdiendo... Salimos ganando... Se llevaron el oro y nos dejaron el oro... Se lo llevaron todo y nos dejaron todo... Nos dejaron las palabras.

el verbo es origen y vierte vida: es sangre, es la sangre que expresa su substancia y está dispuesto así su desarrollo

Papa te llamas papa y no patata

Todo lo que usted quiera, sí señor, pero son las palabras las que cantan, las que suben y bajan... Me prosterno ante ellas... Las amo, las adhiero, las persigo, las muerdo, las derrito... Amo tanto las palabras... Las inesperadas... Las que glotonamente se esperan, se acechan, hasta que de pronto caen... Vocablos amados... Brillan como piedras de colores, saltan como platinados peces

The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about? -Pablo Picasso.

You have to know how to be vulgar. Paint with four-letter words.

Language doesn't heal terror and if it brings us closer to imagining the sufferer's experience, this too doesn't necessarily make us feel greater compassion, but desire for further sensation. If we cannot articulate pain beyond inspiring in the listener a need for revenge, we only speak of and to the body.

The language of the wilderness is the most beautiful language we have and it is our job to sing it, until and even after it is gone, no matter how much it hurts.

Sanskrita, "polished, complete." Sanskrit is the elder sister of all Indo-European tongues. Its alphabetical script is called Devanagari; literally, "divine abode." "Who knows my grammar knows God!" Panini, great philologist of ancient India, paid that tribute to the mathematical and psychological perfection of Sanskrit. He who would track language to its lair must indeed end as omniscient. 2

Mr. Shaw urges the adoption of a new alphabet with forty-two characters (see his preface to Wilson's The Miraculous Birth of Language, Philosophical Library, New York). Such an alphabet would approximate the phonetic perfection of the Sanskrit, whose use of fifty letters prevents mispronunciations.

Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary

Wal-mart... do they like make walls there?

There is one only living and true God, without body, parts, or passions; consisting of three persons—the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." It is painful to the human mind to be compelled to admit, that such wonderful inconsistencies of language or ideas, have ever found place in any human creed. Yet, so it is.