Language Quotes - Page 28

• Many a poem is marred by a superfluous verse.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Writing, Superfluous

  "The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow".

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• My point to you is, there is no such thing as a flop that takes the field for our football team. Just so ya know, I'm proud of those men. How ****ing easy would it have been to say it's their night. Excuse my language. Spectacular group of men. You got to find them, you throw your arms around them and give them a big kiss on the mouth, if you're a girl.

  Les Miles

  Girl, Football, Team

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• To call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Atheism, World, Pantheism

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Religion, a Dialogue, Etc: Top of Schopenhauer”, p.26, 谷月社

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• One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

  Quintilian

  Writing, Impossible, Should

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• So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Book, Independent, Intelligent

  Letter to Carl Fuchs, December 14, 1887.

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• Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.

  James J. Kilpatrick

  Lying, Writing, Advice

  James J. Kilpatrick (2010). “The Writer's Art”, p.39, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• Writing, or at least good writing, is an outgrowth of that urge to use language to communicate complex ideas and experiences between people. And that's true whether you're reading Shakespeare or bad vampire fiction-reading is always an act of empathy. It's always an imagining of what it's like to be someone else.

  John Green

  Reading, Writing, Ideas

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• Now, mark it. This may be strong language, but heed it. The people mean it, and, my friends of the Eastern Democracy, we bid farewell when you do that thing.

  Richard P. Bland

  Funny, Strong, Farewell

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• The truth of the matter is that about 99 percent of teaching is making the students feel interestedin the material. Then the other 1 percent has to do with your methods. And that's not just true of languages. It's true of every subject.

  Noam Chomsky

  Education, Teaching, Reading

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• English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin - a language with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.

  Bill Bryson

  Latin, Coffee, Writing

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• I admit that these terms and the diagrams connected with them repel some readers, and fill others with the vain imagination that they have mastered difficult economics problems, when really they have done little more than learn the language in which parts of those problems can be expressed, and the machinery by which they can be handled. When the actual conditions of particular problems have not been studied, such knowledge is little better than a derrick for sinking oil-wells erected where there are no oil-bearing strata.

  Alfred Marshall

  Oil, Imagination, Done

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• Purists behave as if there was a vintage year when language achieved a measure of excellence which we should all strive to maintain. In fact, there was never such a year. The language of Chaucer's or Shakespeare's time was no better and no worse than that of our own - just different.

  Jean Aitchison

  Writing, Years, Vintage

  Jean Aitchison (2013). “Language Change: Progress Or Decay?”, p.14, Cambridge University Press

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• Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Mean, Elude Us

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• Use the smallest word that does the job.

  E. B. White

  Jobs, Writing, Doe

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• Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

  Edward Albee

  Book, Writing, Reality

  Edward Albee (2009). “Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee”, p.48, Da Capo Press

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• This is the gift all writers seek-to write language that incandesces yet does not melt.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Writing, Doe

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

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• No compulsion in the world is stronger than the urge to edit someone else's document.

  H. G. Wells

  Writing, Stronger, World

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• Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.

  Bill Bryson

  Writing, Ideas, People

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• Morality, like language, is an invented structure for conserving and communicating order. And morality is learned, like language, by mimicking and remembering.

  Jane Rule

  Order, Mimicking, Ethics

  Jane Rule (2013). “Lesbian Images: Essays”, p.20, Open Road Media

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• An instrument that sometimes expresses thought, sometimes obscures thought, but most often replaces thought.

  Evan Esar

  Sometimes, Instruments

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• The language of the street is always strong.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Writing, Streets

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.22, University of Georgia Press

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• One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language.

  Denise Levertov

  Writing, World, Obligation

  Denise Levertov (1973). “The poet in the world”, New Directions Publishing Corporation

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• The language of art is celestial in origin and can only be understood by the chosen.

  El Greco

  Art, Spirit, Celestial

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• Color is a language, like music.

  Vlady Kibalchich Russakov

  Color

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