“Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes,
Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.”
"The Symbols"
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)
Context: p>The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down;
The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown;The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May;
But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way.Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes,
Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.</p
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Nathalia Crane 37
American writer 1913–1998Related quotes
“They are detached from the language and inflated like little balloons.”
On the pretentious words used by lawyers, soldiers, and literary critics, such as "luminous" and "taut." Strunk & White, The Elements of Style 3rd ed. (Boston: Allyn, 1979) page 83.
“I always say that a man with one language is like a man with one eye.”
Source: Novels, Lamb (1980), Ch.1 - p.8
Source: The Scientific Analysis of Personality, 1965, p. 18
Remark (1738?) quoted in Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence [published from the original papers; with notes, and a life of the author, by Samuel Weller Singer]; "Spence's Anecdotes", Section IV. 1737...39. p. 200
“I like you; your eyes are full of language."
[Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964. ]”
“An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.”
I and Thou (1923)
“I learned to understand their language and to speak it a little.”
The Other World (1657)
Context: I learned to understand their language and to speak it a little. Immediately the news spread throughout the kingdom that two little wild men had been discovered. We were smaller than everybody else because the wilderness had provided us with such bad food. And it was a genetic defect that caused us to have forelimbs that weren't strong enough to support us.
This belief gained strength through repetition despite the priests of the country. They opposed it, saying that it was an awful impiety to believe that not only animals but monsters might be of the same species as they.
