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"If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams - the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn."
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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."
"One who has just learnt a foreign language, constantly resorts, while talking, to words belonging to that language in order to make a show of his or her achievement. But one who knows the language well, seldom uses it when speaking in his or her own mother tongue. Such is the case with those who are well advanced in religion."
"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."
Explore more quotes by Robert Southey
"To a resolute mind, wishing to do is the first step toward doing. But if we do not wish to do a thing it becomes impossible."
"No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth."
"It has been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions; they have their place in heaven also."
"Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. Like beams in a house or bones to a body, so is order to all things."
"Never let a man imagine that he can pursue a good end by evil means, without sinning against his own soul. The evil effect on himself is certain."
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