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Language Quotes
"Most of us are unaware of the words we use on a regular basis. We weren't taught that the words we regularly use to describe our experiences and conditions in life impact and influence our emotional states."
29
"There is reinforcement in such familiar back-formations as Chinee from Chinese, Portugee from Portuguese."
29
"I believe that these devices like repetition and rhyme are not artificial, that they're not imposed, somehow, on the language."
29
"The winged word. The mercurial word. The word that is both moth and lamp. The word that is itself and more. the associative word light with meanings. The word not netted by meaning. The exact word wide. The word not whore nor cenobite. The word unlied."
29
"I think I make better use of language and imagery than when I started out."
28
"I took some classes in sign language when I was in my early teens because I was told that I would be completely deaf very early. But I never really wanted to learn."
28
"A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion."
28
"Now multitudes of root words are identical in the American languages over vast areas some of them with precisely the same senses, and others with various shades of analogical meaning."
28
"Some words were made up without any thought given. Nice is one of them. Nice has no meaning. Nice gets thrown out there to replace something meaningful. Take Goodreads and turn it into Nicereads. This goes to show that nice provides no justice."
28
"What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English."
27
"A scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it."
27
"The Hawaiian language is quite unusual because when the original Polynesians came in their canoes, most of their consonants were washed overboard in a storm, and they arrived here with almost nothing but vowels. All the streets have names like Kal'ia'iou'amaa'aaa'eiou, and many street signs spontaneously generate new syllables during the night."
27
"Language is a living thing. We can feel it changing. Parts of it become old: they drop off and are forgotten. New pieces bud out, spread into leaves, and become big branches, proliferating."
26
"French is a language that makes those who speak it both calm and dynamic."
26
"Her majesty is one verb short of a sentence."
26
"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?"
26
"Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague."
26
"But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice."
26
"We need a president who's fluent in at least one language."
26
"If you look up 'charming' in the dictionary, you'll see that it not only has references to strong attraction, but to spells and magic. Then again, what are liars if not great magicians?"
25
"They said I couldn't play anything but an English boy. I knew I could. So I went to New York."
25
"There are certainly a good number of alternatives to 'shit,' if you have a particular need to express such a feeling."
25
"There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle."
25
"Sin is more than a stain. Sin is a wound; it needs to be treated, healed. The place where my encounter with the mercy of Jesus takes place is my sin."
25
"The silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated."
25
"The London dialect as it is spoken in educated circles."
24
"He comments on how amazing it is that everything in the universe can be described by the twenty-six written characters with which they have been working."
24
"When I last went to Italy, over two years ago, I had a lot more trouble understanding the language than I used to when I lived there for a year. I used to speak very little but I could understand very well."
24
"I try for a poetic language that says, This is who we are, where we have been, where we are. This is where we must go. And this is what we must do."
24
"Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world."
23
"To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up."
23
"If you can not master your language you must be it's slave."
23
"If I were assigned poems I suppose I'd write more of them but it is entirely voluntary and for the most part ignored in the market sense of the word so the language to me is most intimate, most important, most sublime and most satisfying when it gets done."
22
"No question; language can free us of feeling, or almost. Maybe that's one of its functions - so we can understand the world without becoming entirely overwhelmed by it."
21
"Wisely selecting the words we use to describe the experiences in and of our lives can make us feel better thus impacting our decisions and actions."
21
"Certain things were deemed to be offensive. It was usually bad language."
20
"Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us."
20
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