Quotes about language

page 6

“You can never tell about a person by guessing… that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.”

“Scars are the paler pain of survival received unwillingly and displayed in the language of injury.”

“Even though Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and capable of killing a man seven different ways with her bare hands, she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy who thinks she's an ordinary girl.”

“Gender is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught.”

“Language transcends us and yet, we speak.”

“I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.”

“There is a transcendental dimension beyond language… It's just hard as hell to talk about!”

“For a woman, language spoken is an expression of what she is feeling. For a man, language spoken is an expression of what he is thinking. A woman says what is on her heart while a man says what is on his mind.”

“To handle a language skillfully is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.”

“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.”

“I'm looking for what might be called a body language. One thing I do is stick a vibrator up my cunt and start writing -- writing from the point of orgasm and losing control of the language and seeing what that's like.”

“Our exclusive dependence on rational thought and language has obscured our natural ability to sense the flow of energy.”

“People in general would rather die than forgive. It'shard. If God said in plain language. "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.”

“Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.”

“Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.”

“The language of love letters is the same as suicide notes.”

“What happened? Did a house fall on your sister?" I asked. Maybe there was a benefit to our language barrier. She pursed her lips.
"You can't stay here much longer," she said.
My mouth dropped open.
"You… you speak English?"
She snorted. "Of course.”

“Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.”

“War is what happens when language fails.”

“Personally I like going places where I don't speak the language, don't know anybody, don't know my way around and don't have any delusions that I'm in control. Disoriented, even frightened, I feel alive, awake in ways I never am at home.”

“Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at it's melancholy rim, green in it's envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in it's greatest rages, black.”

“What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!”

“Mastery of language affords remarkable power.”

“Lately, I feel like my life is a book written in a language I don't know how to read.”

“And how does God speak to you?"
"In the language of everything that is beautiful.”

“The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.”

“Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.”

“Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.”

“The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.”

“Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.”

“The woman said something to Roman. He stopped, turned to her, and shook his staff.
She crossed her arms. I couldn't see her face, but I read the body language well enough.”

“Raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It's the most important thing that happens, and it's the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved.”

“The clans began to bombard the outer force field with rockets, missiles, nukes, and harsh language.”

“It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case." --”

“Learning another language is like becoming another person.”

“Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication.
-Aunt Beast”

“Language is like a road, it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other.”

“Zoë threw up her hands in exasperation. "I hate this language. It changes too often!”

“I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.”

“Amazing what the British do with language; the nuances of politeness. The world's great diplomats, surely.”

“The language of sin was universal, the original Esperanto.”

“That’s what I like about sports. No matter if everyone playing the game speaks completely different languages, on the field, or the court, wherever they are playing, the language of moves and passes and scores is all the same. Universal.”

“Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.”

“Teach her to question language. Language is the repository of our prejudices, our beliefs, our assumptions.”

“I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.”

“Language can be very adept at hiding the truth.”

“History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.”

“Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.”

“Nothing in life is fair. Fair is a dirty word and I'll thank you not to use that language around me.”

“Did you know there are thirty-two names for love in one of the Eskimo languages?" August said. "And we just have this one. We are so limited, you have to use the same word.”

“How do you say yoo-hoo in Arabic?"
"I believe that yoo-hoo could be part of a universal language," Dan said. "Like ow. Or- you're stepping on my foot."
"That's universal?"
"No, you're stepping on my foot. Ow."
Amy moved.”

“Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea.”

“We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.”

“We sit and talk,
quietly, with long lapses of silence
and I am aware of the stream
that has no language, coursing
beneath the quiet heaven of
your eyes
which has no speech”

“If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue.”

“I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much… so, so much.”

“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.”

“❝Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going.❞”

“The love in his eyes was so powerful, I needed to look away. Seth had an amazing grasp of the English language, but there were days when that skill was nothing compared to what he told me in his looks.”

“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.”

“If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.”

“In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty -six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society.”

“I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?”

“Erotic play discloses a nameless world which is revealed by the nocturnal language of lovers. Such language is not written down. It is whispered into the ear at night in a hoarse voice. At dawn it is forgotten.”

“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.”

“You who speak languages, you are such liars.”

“This, the language of deception, we both understand. We were born to it, along with the curses.”

“The primitive in each of us climbs closer to the surface during the night, for the moon sings to it, and the cold void between the stars speaks its language. To that savage self, evil can look lovely in too little light.”

“They were always like two people talking to each other in different languages. But she loved him so much, when he withdrew as he had now done, it was like the warm sun going down and leaving her in chilly twilight dews.”

“It's [the word “sorry”] the most infuriating word in the English language. Just a cheap way to behave badly then shelve responsibility by putting the onus on the other person to be forgiving.”

“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.”

“It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.”

“[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.”

“That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.”

“There must be a language that doesn't depend on words.”

“Names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

“Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can't deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can't be explained and understood.”

“I can understand bitchiness in any language.”

“She even learnt the language of a strange country which Senior Cosetti had been told some people believed still existed, although no-one in the world could say where it was. The name of this country was Wales.”

“You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't a true love.. the love that speaks the language of the world.”

“A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.”

“I am like the fish in the aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that’s not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood.”

“They took away our land, our language, and our religion; but they could never harness our tongues…”

“I had no voice to talk with because she was my whole language. Without her to talk to, there was nothing to say.”

“Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it's trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once.”

“The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.”

“Good writers are those who keep the language efficient.”

“Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.”

“You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you can clean it up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.”

“That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say No in any of them.”

“The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.”

“If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can learn to understand the world.”

“Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.”

“It is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.”

“Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee”

“Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it, hotheadedness isn't.”

“. The language of love is like that, possessive. That should be the first warning that it's not going to encourage anyone's betterment.”

“Isn’t the most sensitive point of this mourning the fact that I must lose a language — the amorous language? No more ‘I love you’s.”

“Some very considerable part of the gestural language of public places that had once belonged to cigarettes now belonged to phones.”