Quotes about tongue (712 quotes, page 2)

“Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Letter to James C. Conkling (1863)

Men , Fear , Peace , Hope

“… love one another, as the Lord says: "This is My commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you." And let them show their love by the works they do for each other, according as the Apostle says: "let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth."”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

Francis of Assisi, Rule of 1221, Rule 11 http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/wosf/wosf06.htm/ - That the Brothers ought not to speak or detract, but ought to love one another.
Disputed, Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.

Love , Truth

“Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and Cabalists — rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget. In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful Humanity.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Nobel lecture (1978)

World , Hope , Way , Memory

“We shared a common tongue, but my language was a different language from theirs.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)
Context: All my life I have done nothing but feel and cultivate my feelings; all their lives they had done nothing but strive for petty goals, the trivial material prizes of American life. We shared a common tongue, but my language was a different language from theirs.

“…man, this ruler over general evil,
With a perfidious heart, with a lying tongue…”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"The Cemetery" (1830)
Poems

Lying , Evil , Heart

“The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Reply to New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association (21 March 1864), Collected Works, Vol. 7, p. 259-260 1:566 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln7/1:566?rgn=div1;singlegenre=All;sort=occur;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=houseless
1860s
Context: None are so deeply interested to resist the present rebellion as the working people. Let them beware of prejudice, working division and hostility among themselves. The most notable feature of a disturbance in your city last summer, was the hanging of some working people by other working people. It should never be so. The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor — property is desirable — is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.

People , Family

“In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
Context: Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue.
When we think about this conjuring up of the dead of world history, a salient difference reveals itself. Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, St. Just, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the parties and the masses of the old French Revolution, performed the task of their time – that of unchaining and establishing modern bourgeois society – in Roman costumes and with Roman phrases.

Learning , Forgetting

“In every clime, thy visage greets my eyes,
In every tongue thy kindred accents rise;
The thought expanding swells my heart with glee,
It finds a friend, and loves itself in thee.”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)
Context: In every clime, thy visage greets my eyes,
In every tongue thy kindred accents rise;
The thought expanding swells my heart with glee,
It finds a friend, and loves itself in thee. Say then, fraternal family divine,
Whom mutual wants and mutual aids combine,
Say from what source the dire delusion rose,
That souls like ours were ever made for foes;
Why earth's maternal bosom, where we tread,
To rear our mansions and receive our bread,
Should blush so often for the face she bore,
So long be drench'd with floods of filial gore;
Why to small realms for ever rest confin'd
Our great affections, meant for all mankind.
Though climes divide us; shall the stream or sea,
That forms a barrier 'twixt my friend and me,
Inspire the wish his peaceful state to mar,
And meet his falchion in the ranks of war? Not seas, nor climes, nor wild ambition's fire
In nations' minds could e'er the wish inspire;
Where equal rights each sober voice should guide,
No blood would stain them, and no war divide.
'Tis dark deception, 'tis the glare of state,
Man sunk in titles, lost in Small and Great;
'Tis Rank, Distinction, all the hell that springs
From those prolific monsters, Courts and Kings.

Love , Heart

“Man is one name belonging to every nation upon earth. In them all is one soul though many tongues.”
Omnium gentium unus homo, uarium nomen est, una anima, uaria uox, unus spiritus, uarius sonus, propria cuique genti loquella, sed loquellae materia communis.

Tertullian (155–220) Christian theologian

De Testimonio Animae (The Testimony of the Soul), 6.3
Context: Man is one name belonging to every nation upon earth. In them all is one soul though many tongues. Every country has its own language, yet the subjects of which the untutored soul speaks are the same everywhere.

Soul

“Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

I, st. 4
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), A Dialogue of Self and Soul http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1397/
Context: My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows
Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known —
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

Thinking , Dead

“This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations — the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Ch. XXXVIII http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5811/5811-h/5811-h.htm
Following the Equator (1897)

God , Religion , History , Country

“God gave man two ears and one tongue so we could listen twice as much as we talk.”

Faisal of Saudi Arabia (1906–1975) King of Saudi Arabia

As per an article published in the New York Times in 1975, this was King Faisal's favorite quote. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/26/archives/faisal-rich-and-powerful-led-saudis-into-20th-century-and-to-arab.html

God

“A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use.”

Washington Irving Rip Van Winkle

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)
Source: "Rip Van Winkle".

Age

“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.”

Dr. Seuss The Lorax

Variant: I speak for the trees!
Source: The Lorax

Tree

“The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history's clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book The Guns of August

Source: The Guns of August

World , History , Sun

“I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue…”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

Wisdom , People

“When I turn around, he cups my face in his hands and he kisses me so deeply that I don't know who is breathing for who, but his mouth and tongue taste like warm honey. I don't know how long it lasts, but when I let go of him, I miss it already.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Kiss

“We set down feasts for each other and treated our love with tongues of fire. Our bodies were fields of wonder to us.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Love

“Cat tongues are awesome." --Nellie Gomez, The 39 Clues, Beyond The Grave”

Jude Watson (1956) novelist

Cats

“… it's as empty as a merchant's soul. Sorry, Kheldar, it's just an old expression."
"That's all right, Beldin," Silk forgave him grandly. "These little slips of the tongue are common in the very elderly.”

David Eddings (1931–2009) American novelist

Source: Sorceress of Darshiva

Soul

“Unpredictable as a hungry lion, he might be feared by everyone else, but he never ripped out my throat, only licked me, and, if his tongue was a little rough sometimes, it was worth it to walk beside the king of the jungle.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Fear

“Sienna shrugged, apparently unconcerned by what the warrior had said. "You'll have to forgive me for now noticing you back then. Next to him, you're kind of homely."
William chocked on his own tongue.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Seduction

Home , Forgiveness

“Dandelion wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered… sealed away for opening on a January day with snow falling fast and the sun unseen for weeks…”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Wine , Sun , Summer

“The tongue may be an unruly member--
But silence poisons the soul.”

Edgar Lee Masters book Spoon River Anthology

Source: Spoon River Anthology

Soul , Silence

“When someone dies, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you
have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all the nerves are still a little raw.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Variant: when you [lose someone], it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw
Source: House Rules

Feeling

“Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars
for you? That I would take you there? The splash
of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube?”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

Star

“So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Katniss Everdeen, p. 5
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)

Learning , Reading , Indifference

“You can include me, too." William blew Olivia a kiss, and her cheeks heated with a blush. "No need to say anything. I already know what words are perched on your tongue. Stop me if I'm wrong, but my getting to know you will be your pleasure.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Passion

Pleasure , Kiss

“Oh, Tongue, give sound to joy and sing
Of hope and promise on dragonwing”

Anne McCaffrey book Dragonsong

Source: Dragonsong

Hope , Singing , Joy

“Some people are born with the first word of a language resting on their tongue though it may take some time before they can taste it.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

People , Time

“A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things

“Mulch's tongue lolled out, resting on the centaur's neck. "Mmm," he mumbled around his tongue. "Horse. Tasty"

"Let's go," said Foaly nervously. "Let's go right now.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Atlantis Complex

Horse

“Please!’
That word didn’t make sense to Nico. The Underworld had no mercy. It only had justice.
‘You’re already dead,’ Nico said. ‘You’re a ghost with no tongue, no memory. You won’t be sharing any secrets.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Secret , Justice , Sense , Memory

“How does it taste?” Carter wondered.
Zia smiled. “Stick out your tongue.”
To answer Carter’s question, the tattoo tasted like burning car tires.
“Ugh.” I spit a blue gob of “order and harmony” into the fountain.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Smile , Cars , Question , Tattoo

“He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1780s, Letter to Peter Carr (1785)

Truth , Lie , World , Time

“Do you know how, when you are on the verge of a breakdown, the world pounds in your ears; a rush of blood, of consequence? Do you now how it feels when the truth cuts your tongue to ribbons, and still you have to speak it?”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Truth , World , Feeling

“What are you doing?" she asked, trying to raise herself.

"First, I thought I'd show you what a pity it would be if they cut off my wicked tongue.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

“What good are laws that cannot be read or understood, or a tongue that spews only hatred or ignorance? What good is the written word to an illiterate man?”

Delores Phillips (1950–2014) American writer

Source: The Darkest Child

Law , Reading

“I may have been dead for the past hundred and fifty years, Susannah,… but that doesn't mean I don't know how people say good night. And generally, when people say good night, they keep their tongues to themselves.”

Meg Cabot book Ninth Key

Source: Ninth Key

People , Past , Night , Dead

“I'm so great even I get tongue-tied talking to myself.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Suddenly a sorrow the color of dawn welled up in him. They might as well lick each other's wounds. But they would lick forever, and the wounds would never heal, and in the end their tongues would be worn away.”

Kóbó Abe book The Woman in the Dunes

Part 2, Ch. 27
The Woman in the Dunes (1962)

Color

“You have me like a drawing, erased, coloured in, untitled, signed by your tongue.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Source: Selected Poems

Drawing

“Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.”

Alice Hoffman book The Ice Queen

Source: The Ice Queen

“They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Thinking

“And may the odds—" He tosses a berry in a high arc toward me.
I catch it in my mouth and break the delicate skin with my teeth. The sweet tartness explodes across my tongue. "—be ever in your favor!”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Gale Hawthorne and Katniss Everdeen, p. 8
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)

“Love demands expression. It will not stay still, stay silent, be good, be modest, be seen and not heard, no. It will break out in tongues of praise, the high note that smashes the glass and spills the liquid.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Love

“Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all day by themselves with no help from the mind.”

Toni Morrison Love

Source: Love

Beauty , Silence , Help

“The human tongue is a beast that few can master.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

“Listen sharp, think deep, and guard your tongue- Tam al'Thor”

Robert Jordan book The Eye of the World

Source: The Eye of the World

Thinking

“Why do some memories live only on your tongue or in your nose? Why do others always stay in your heart?”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

Memory , Heart

“Hey, Effie, watch this!" says Peeta. He tosses his fork over his shoulder and literally licks his plate clean whit his tongue making loud, satisfied sounds. Then he blows a kiss out to her in general and calls, "We miss you, Effie!”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Kiss

“Your voice is wild and simple.
You are untranslatable
Into any one tongue.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

“This isn’t really death,’ Tyler says. ‘We’ll be legend. We won’t grow old.’ I tongue the barrel into my cheek and say, Tyler, you’re thinking of vampires.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Death , Thinking

“Its important to know stories. I felt the earth shift to make a place for you when you were born, and I came to tell you stories while you are young. And like me, you were born with a word on your tongue.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

“I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.)”

Franz Wright (1953–2015) American poet

Source: Walking to Martha's Vineyard

Love , Death , People , Dead

“If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner… if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Secret , Silence

“It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue, and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

People , Drink , Time

“The gospel is not a doctrine of the tongue, but of life. It cannot be grasped by reason and memory only, but it is fully understood when it possesses the whole soul and penetrates to the inner recesses of the heart.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life

Life , Soul , Memory , Heart

“Finally the vampire released him with another groan, sitting back on his haunches. "Your blood isin power." Running his tongue over a fang, he said, "Among other things. I believe I might be high. But Iit.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

“I had killed our careful relationship by driving my tongue through its heart and pushing it off a cliff.”

Jeff Lindsay book Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Source: Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Heart

“Cat got your tongue? And what a lovely tongue it is. I know. It licked every inch of me. Repeatedly. For months," He purred but with steel in the velvet”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Love , Cats

“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.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

World , Dead

“A nervous silence loosens tongues”

Jacqueline Carey book Kushiel's Chosen

Kushiel's Chosen

Silence

“When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.”

Ian McEwan book On Chesil Beach

Source: On Chesil Beach

Way , Kiss , Strong , Past

“A quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Life

“Now the tattoos," Zia announced.
"Brilliant!" I said.
"On your tongue," she added.
"Excuse me?”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Tattoo

“Silence, maiden; thy tongue outruns thy discretion.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Source: Ivanhoe

Silence

“I have tried many times to express my feelings, but at each attempt, I find myself tongue-tied.”

Kate Cary book Bloodline

Source: Bloodline

Feeling , Time

“Where did this come from? Do you know what this is? Luca is going to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and squirt it on his tongue. It's like drugs for ten-year-olds. Today it's Ice Magic. Tomorrow, heroin.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Night

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

Brendan Behan (1923–1964) Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright

Religion

“How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter?”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

As quoted in Love, Sex, Death & The Meaning of Life : The Films of Woody Allen (2001) by Foster Hirsch, p. 50.

God

“Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

Love , Women , Money , Appearance

“You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Relationship , Marriage , Happiness

“Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder goe when it dies?”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Color , Country

“Does the giraffe know what he's for? Or care? Or even think about his place in things? A giraffe has a black tongue twenty-seven inches long and no vocal cords. A giraffe has nothing to say. He just goes on giraffing.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Thinking

“Good Lord, woman. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that men have a specified word count set aside each day and if I don’t stop talking, my tongue will explode? (Syn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Fire

Men

“Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.”

Robertson Davies book The Rebel Angels

Source: The Rebel Angels

Silence

“If it is very painful for you to criticize your friends, you are safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that is the time to hold your tongue”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Friendship , For Friend , For Bestfriend , Pain

“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“With the inevitability of a tongue returning to probe a painful tooth, we come back and back and back again to our fears, sitting to talk them over with the eagerness of a hungry man before a full and steaming plate.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Source: Books of Blood: Volume Two

Pain , Fear

“After all, how many of us had tried to forget something traumatic… only to find it printed on the back of our eyelids, tattooed on our tongues?”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Tattoo , Forgetting

“I act as the tongue of you,
… tied in your mouth…. in mine it begins to be loosened.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. One of the things which Gertrude Butterwick had impressed on Monty Bodkin when he left for his holiday on the Riviera was that he must be sure to practise his French, and Gertrude’s word was law. So now, though he knew that it was going to make his nose tickle, he said:
‘Er, garçon.’
‘M’sieur?’
‘Er, garçon, esker-vous avez un spot de l’encre et une piece de papier—note papier, vous savez—et une envelope et une plume.’
The strain was too great. Monty relapsed into his native tongue.
‘I want to write a letter,’ he said. And having, like all lovers, rather a tendency to share his romance with the world, he would probably have added ‘to the sweetest girl on earth’, had not the waiter already bounded off like a retriever, to return a few moments later with the fixings.
‘V’la, sir! Zere you are, sir,’ said the waiter. He was engaged to a girl in Paris who had told him that when on the Riviera he must be sure to practise his English. ‘Eenk—pin—pipper—enveloppe—and a liddle bit of bloddin-pipper.’
‘Oh, merci,’ said Monty, well pleased at this efficiency. ‘Thanks. Right-ho.’
‘Right-ho, m’sieur,’ said the waiter.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Luck of the Bodkins

Source: The Luck of the Bodkins (1935)

World , Law , Girl , Lovers

“She is written in a foreign tongue.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“The walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious.”

Roald Dahl James and the Giant Peach

Source: James and the Giant Peach

“Ha! to forget. How childish! I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears. You may nail your mouth shut, you may cut out your tongue, can you keep yourself from existing? Will you stop your thoughts.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Inès reiterating to Garcin that they cannot ignore one another, Act 1, sc. 5
No Exit (1944)
Source: No Exit and Three Other Plays

Feeling , Silence , Forgetting

“Living is about clucking your tongue and enjoying the sound.
~Slater”

Ted Dekker book Three

Source: Thr3e

“BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Beauty

“At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than a wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue.”

George Packer (1960) American journalist and writer

Fear , Disappointment , Heart

“Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

Feeling , Thinking , Time

“Your lips, beloved, are like a honeycomb: honey and milk are under the tongue. And the smell of your clothes is like the smell of my home.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Home , Clothes

“Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

Winter , Past

“She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Dependency , Sincerity

“I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Love

“Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

“Lips and tongues lie. But actions never do. No matter what words are spoken, actions betray the truth of everyone's heart.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Fury

Truth , Lie , Heart

“Another glorious day, the air as delicious to the lungs as nectar to the tongue.”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 253
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

“Sometimes words drew blood, they cut your tongue, they made you know things you couldn't unknow.”

Alice Hoffman The Story Sisters

Source: The Story Sisters

“Peter. Peter Kavinsky.” Even saying his name is a remembered pleasure, something to savor, like a piece of chocolate dissolving on my tongue.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Pleasure

“Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen.”

Maimónides (1138–1204) rabbi, physician, philosopher

Books

Quotes about tongue page 2

Quotes about tongue
page 2