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"The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back."
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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."
"I want to hear you wound my lovely language with your rough barbarian tongue."
"English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing."
"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 Karl Kraus
"My unconscious knows more about the consciousness of the psychologist than his consciousness knows about my unconscious."
"Sex education is legitimate in that girls cannot be taught soon enough how children don't come into the world."
"Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots."
"Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write."
"How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print."
"Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust."
"The trouble with Germans is not that they fire shells, but that they engrave them with quotations from Kant."
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