top of page
.png){kind=small}
Language Quotes
"Why people use "Was" I have heard some people to say "I was a smart kid at school - Eminem", but why "Was", was is a word for describing the past... which will mean that has started and ended... so what??? How to get it now? You aren't wise, are you?"
1
"Putting it into words will destroy any meaning."
1
"The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar."
1
"We assume, to begin with, that the individual is at least as complex in his internal structure as the language is which he speaks - otherwise, how could he speak a language which is complex?"
1
"All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer."
1
"The English like eccentrics. They just don't like them living next door."
1
"The Eskimo has fifty-names for snow because it is important to them there ought to be as many for love."
1
"Kitai blinked slowly. "Why would you use the same word for these things? That is ridiculous.""We have a lot of words like that," Tavi said. "They can mean more than one thing.""That is stupid," Kitai said. "It is difficult enough to communicate without making it more complicated with words that mean more than one thing."
1
"They said I couldn't play anything but an English boy. I knew I could. So I went to New York."
1
"The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather to bring out the differences."
1
"Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague."
1
"Words are the fallen ruins of silent majesty."
1
"Perfect grammar--persistent, continuous, sustained--is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it."
1
"He is forced to coin words himself, and, taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other (as perhaps the people of Babel did in the beginning), so to crush them together that a brand new word in the end drops out."
1
"Language is a tool for communicating and not a barrier to writing."
1
"As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scen."
1
"No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism."
1
"I must confess, my Spanish is not so good - except I read a little, so I started with the English but then determined that it would have to be in Spanish."
1
"Because of my language and the pantomime with which most Europeans accompany their speech, I was catalogued as a heavy."
1
"The alphabet is where all our secrets begin."
1
"Percy, we're going to Polyphemus' island! Polyphemus is an S-i-k...a C-y-k..." She stamped her foot in frustration. As smart as she was, Annabeth was dyslexic, too. We could've been there all night while she tried to spell Cyclops. "You know what I mean!"
1
"We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable."
1
"Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning: the meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination."
1
"But language is wine upon his lips."
1
"Words are not static.Language shape our memories, and it is also shaped by our memories."
1
"The wonder of words."
1
"There are some sounds that English singers find quite difficult to manipulate."
1
"Language should be an ever developing procedure and not an isolated occurrence."
1
"But I am a storyteller, and that involves language, for me the English language, that wonderfully rich, complex, and ofttimes confusing tongue. When language is limited, I am thereby diminished, too."
1
"These examples of the lack of simplicity in English and French, all appearances to the contrary, could be multiplied almost without limit and apply to all national languages."
1
"It probably helps that my background is in the sciences and I can speak the scientists' language."
1
"Language, when it finally comes, has the vigor of a felon pardoned after twenty-one years on hold. Sudden, raw, stripped to its underwear."
1
"God, don't they teach you how to spell these days?""No," I answer. "They teach us to use spell-check."
"Sanskrit is a beautiful contextual language. It is called "Dev Bhasha the language of the soul. Here, meanings of the words must come from the heart, from direct experience " dictionary meanings or static meanings have not much value. Meanings of the words vary depending on mind-set, time, location and culture. The words are made to expand the possibilities of the mind."
"I want to hear you wound my lovely language with your rough barbarian tongue."
bottom of page