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Language Quotes
"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."
15
"Comamandering is not a word.It has letters, doesn't it? Sounds like a word to me."
14
"When someone uses the phrase 'the prick one', and you know immediately that this is a synonym for the word 'metaphorically', you are entitled to wonder whether you know the speaker too well. You are even entitled to wonder whether you should know her at all."
14
"No language is rude that can boast polite writers."
14
"A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably."
14
"The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar."
14
"We, Brandy and Alfa and me, we've been speaking English as a second language so long that we've forgotten it as our first.I have no native tongue."
14
"I know your head aches. I know you're tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what you're trying to accomplish - just think what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language; it's the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds. And that's what you've set yourself out to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will."
14
"It is ironic that the only thing separating 'friend' from 'fiend' - is a single letter."
14
"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."
14
"But language is wine upon his lips."
14
"I shouldn't need to remind you that it was words that created the universe and The Word that now holds it together. While your man was simply reading one little book, something not unlike Genesis was stirring in his skull, and you didn't think to stop it?"
14
"God, don't they teach you how to spell these days?""No," I answer. "They teach us to use spell-check."
13
"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."
13
"Where more is meant than meets the ear."
13
"I am no poet. I do not love words for the sake of words. I love words for what they can accomplish. Similarly, I am no arithmetician. Numbers that speak only of numbers are of little interest to me."
13
"Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased."
13
"In Sanskrit, there exists no word for 'The Individual' (L'Individu). En GrA ce antique, il n'y avait aucun mot pour dire 'Devoir' (Duty). In French, the word for 'Wife' is the same as the word for 'Woman.' En anglais, nous n'avons aucun mot semblable A l'exquise 'Jouissance!"
13
"When I use a word ' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' 'The question is ' said Alice 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is ' said Humpty Dumpty 'which is to be master - that's all.'"
13
"I paint to evoke a changing language of symbols, a language with which to remark upon the qualities of our mysterious capacities which direct us toward ultimate reality."
13
"One should always cite what one does not understand at all in the language one understands the least."
13
"Putting it into words will destroy any meaning."
13
"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."
13
"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!"
13
"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."
12
"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?"
12
"Language is man's way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals."
12
"Words are not cubicles for truth telling. Words do not allow us to touch the face of God or define the contours of the soul. Words are imprecise and cannot capture all aspects of reality or replicate all facets of a person's emotional mA©lange. Language allows for limited explorations of reality and minimal probing of the human mind. I accept that the only possible relation between language and the world is the image displayed in each person's head by the picture invoking ability of language. Select word pictures might accurately portray what I perceive and still be vague, blatantly inaccurate, completely meaningless, misleading, distorted, or incomprehensible in other persons' minds."
12
"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."
12
"He used to raise a storm in a teapot."
12
"Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage."
12
"No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another."
12
"The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle of a sentence."
12
"Words are never insufficient to describe any situation. It is the talent to use the words which is the insufficient one!"
12
"In its proper role, a number counts the missing words."
12
"Jeez, Hazel," Percy said, "tell your horse to watch his language."Hazel tried not to laugh. "What did he say?""With the cussing removed? He said he can get us to the top."Frank looked incredulous. "I thought the horse couldn't fly!"This time Arion whinnied so angrily, even Hazel could guess he was cursing."Dude," Percy told the horse, "I've gotten suspended for saying less than that..."
12
"God created us for love, for union, for forgiveness and compassion and, yet, that has not been our storyline. That has not been our history."
11
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