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"It has often been observed that the repercussion of poetic language on prose language can be considered a decisive cut of a whip."
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Exlpore more Language quotes
"Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin."
"The dream vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world's daytime dictionaries."
"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?"
"She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee's knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else."
"A dog is der Hund the dog; a women is die Frau the wom[an]; a horse is das Pferd, the horse; now you put that dog in the Genitive case, & is he the same dog he was before? No sir; he is das Hundes; put him in the Dative case & what is he? Why, he is dem Hund. Now you snatch him into the accusative case & how is it with him? Why he is den Hunden? ... Read moreBut suppose he happens to be twins & you have to pluralize him, what then? Why sir they'll swap that twin dog around thro' the four cases till he'll think he's an entire International Dog Show all in his own person. I don't like dogs, but I wouldn't treat a dog like that. I wouldn't even treat a borrowed dog that way."
Explore more quotes by Eugenio Montale
"This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul."
"Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection."
"True poetry is similar to certain pictures whose owner is unknown and which only a few initiated people know."
"There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry."
"Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity."
"Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought."
"Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one."
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