Language
- Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.
-- Maya Angelou
- For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His enemies have only to find it.
-- Ambrose Bierce
- Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.
-- Elizabeth Bowen
- Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.
-- Elizabeth Bowen
- Language is the roadmap of a culture. It tells you where its people came from and where they are going.
-- Rita Mae Brown
- Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.
-- Rita Mae Brown
- The coldest word was once a glowing new metaphor.
-- Thomas Carlyle
- Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.
-- Angela Carter
- Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.
-- Katherine Dunn
- Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?
-- E.M. Forster
- The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearne, but it is still nonsense.
-- Benjamin Franklin
- Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks he can talk about language.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Like a diaphanous nightgown, language both hides and reveals
-- Karen Elizabeth Gordon
- If language had been the creation not of poetry but of logic, we should only have one.
-- Friedrich Hebbel
- If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found the time to conquer the world.
-- Heinrich Heine
- Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes, and thanks to words, we have sunk to the level of the demons.
-- Aldous Huxley
- Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth.
-- Anna Jameson
- Language is memory and metaphor.
-- Storm Jameson
- Language is the dress of thought.
-- Samuel Johnson
- If it is true that the violin is the most perfect of musical instruments, then Greek is the violin of humn thought.
-- Helen Keller
- Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.
-- Penelope Lively
- I can remember the lush spring excitement of language in childhood. Sitting in church, rolling it around my mouth like marbles--tabernacle and pharisee and parable, tresspass and Babylon and covenant.
-- Penelope Lively
- All language reflects the prejudices of the society in which it evolved.
-- Casey Miller
- Our native language is like a second skin, so much a part of us we resist the idea that it is constantly changing, constantly being renewed.
-- Casey Miller
- We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
-- Toni Morrison
- We defend ourself with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
-- Iris Murdoch
- Look wise; say nothing and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
-- William Osler
- Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect.
-- Blaise Pascal
- I stand and listen to people speaking french in the stores and in the street. It's such a pert, crisp language, elegant as ruffling taffeta.
-- Belva Plain
- The most precious things in speech are pauses.
-- Ralph Richardson
- Words are loaded pistols.
-- Jean-Paul Sarte
- Syllables govern the world.
-- John Selden
- It was greek to me.
-- William Shakespeare
- Language helps form the limits of our reality.
-- Dale Spender
- Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
-- Lily Tomlin (Jane Wagner, 'We invented...')
- Spoken language is merely a series of squeaks.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
- Language is wine upon the lips.
-- Virginia Woolf
- Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
-- William Butler Yeats
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