“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”
Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle
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Shirley Jackson49
novelist, short story writer 1916–1965Related quotes
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator
The Blessed Damozel http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/715.html (1850)
“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher
This actually first appears in Recent Experiments in Psychology (1950) by Leland Whitney Crafts, Théodore Christian Schneirla, and Elsa Elizabeth Robinson, where it is expressed:
: If we used a different vocabulary or if we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
Randy Allen Harris, in Rhetoric and Incommensurability (2005), p. 35, and an endnote on p. 138 indicates the misattribution seems to have originated in a misreading of quotes in Patterns Of Discovery: An Inquiry Into The Conceptual Foundations of Science (1958) by Norwood Russell Hanson, where an actual quotation of WIttgenstein on p. 184 is followed by one from the book on psychology.
Misattributed
Jim C. Hines (1974) American writer
Source: The Goblin Quest Series, Goblin Hero (2007), Chapter 1 (pp. 19-20)
“I don't speak Latin. It's a dead language. It killed the Romans, and now it's killing us.”
Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist
Dr. Kent Hovind - Newly Discovered Dinosaur Species Proof of Evolution? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4VH68W5nKs, Youtube (October 14 2015)
On feeling that she did not have a voice in her youth in “Interviews: Stacey Lee” https://bookpage.com/interviews/24281-stacey-lee-historical-fiction#.XflgiulKjcs in BookPage (Aug 2019)
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist
Love’s Parting Wreath
The Fate of Adelaide (1821)
Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (1905–1977) the fifth President of India and a politician
Source: Presidents of India, 1950-2003, P.107
Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist
Come Down in Time
Song lyrics, Tumbleweed Connection (1970)
Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2
"I still have'nt found what I'm looking for"
Lyrics, The Joshua Tree (1987)
Context: I have spoke with the tongue of Angels, I have held the hand of The Devil. It was warm in the night, I was cold as a stone