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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 Leonard Cohen
"Any startling piece of work has a subversive element in it, a delicious element often. Subversion is only disagreeable when it manifests in political or social activity."
"A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love."
"I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young. That's what sitting on your ass does to your face."
"Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true."
"To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a Covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation's sweetest dreams of itself."
"The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape."
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