“Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.”

—  Paul Tillich

Source: The Eternal Now

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Paul Tillich 61
German-American theologian and philosopher 1886–1965

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“Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

Source: The Eternal Now

Edward Sapir photo

“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.”

Edward Sapir (1884–1939) American linguist and anthropologist

The Status Of Linguistics As A Science (1929), p. 69 <!-- 1958 edition -->
Context: Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.

Napoleon I of France photo

“Dante has not deigned to take his inspiration from any other. He has wished to be himself, himself alone; in a word, to create.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Context: Dante has not deigned to take his inspiration from any other. He has wished to be himself, himself alone; in a word, to create. He has occupied a vast space, and has filled it with the superiority of a sublime mind. He is diverse, strong, and gracious. He has imagination, warmth, and enthusiasm. He makes his reader tremble, shed tears, feel the thrill of honor in a way that is the height of art. Severe and menacing, he has terrible imprecations for crime, scourgings for vice, sorrow for misfortune. As a citizen, affected by the laws of the republic, he thunders against its oppressors, but he is always ready to excuse his native city, Florence is ever to him his sweet, beloved country, dear to his heart. I am envious for my dear France, that she has never produced a rival to Dante; that this Colossus has not had his equal among us. No, there is no reputation which can be compared to his.

“Being someone is being one alone. Being someone is loneliness.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Ser alguien es ser alguien solo. Ser alguien es soledad.
Voces (1943)

Jacob Bronowski photo

“The language of ideas creates a different universe: a universe which has multiplied the monkey's vocabulary of forty words to the million words in the English dictionary.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Imaginative Mind in Art" (1978)

“Tony the Beat Poet says the words alone, lonely and loneliness are three of the most powerful words in the English language. I agree with Tony. Those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Herman Dooyeweerd photo

“This universal character of referring and expressing, which is proper to our entire created cosmos, stamps created reality as meaning, in accordance with its dependent non-self-sufficient nature. Meaning is the being of all that has been created and the nature even of our selfhood. It has a religious root and a divine origin.”

Herman Dooyeweerd (1894–1977) Dutch philosopher

Source: A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Volume I: The Necessary Presuppositions of Philosophy (trans. William S. Young and David H. Freeman), p. 4 ( full context http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/dooy002newc05_01/dooy002newc05_01_0004.php#4)

Gerhard Richter photo

“To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless, too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing, what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that... Painting is another form of thinking.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote, 1970's; from the documentary 'Gerhard Richter - Painting', Corrinna Belz, 2011
1970's

“Science does not speak of the world in the language of words alone, and in many cases it simply cannot do so. The natural language of science is a synergistic integration of words, diagrams, pictures, graphs, maps, equations, tables, charts, and other forms of visual and mathematical expression… [Science thus consists of] the languages of visual representation, the languages of mathematical symbolism, and the languages of experimental operations.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Jay Lemke (2003), "Teaching all the languages of science: Words , symbols, images and actions," p. 3; as cited in: Scott, Phil, Hilary Asoko, and John Leach. "Student conceptions and conceptual learning in science." Handbook of research on science education (2007): 31-56.

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