Language Quotes - Page 33

• To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost -that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization -is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.

  Victor Hugo

  Men, Civilization, Complicated

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Philosophical, Vocabulary, People

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• The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay

  E. B. White

  Needs, Use, Cows

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• I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sea, Heaven, Speech

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843”, p.357, Harvard University Press

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• Why has mankind had such a craving to be imposed upon? Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won't last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness. Even Michelangelo becomes at last a lump and a burden and a bore. It is so hard to see past him.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Art, Past, Long

  D. H. Lawrence, Simonetta de Filippis (2002). “Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays”, p.33, Cambridge University Press

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• It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

  Nathaniel Borenstein

  Writing, Baghdad, Ethics

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• Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Ignorant, Foreign Language, Knows

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• What is a nation without a mother tongue?

  Jack Edwards

  Mother, Tongue, Nations

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• We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. . . . We have affection. We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a 'common goal' of nature as I can guess at.

  Lewis Thomas

  Life, Music, Science

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• A blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts ... the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Men, Wish, Body

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• C has all the expressive power of two dixie cups and a string.

  Jamie Zawinski

  Two, Cups, Dixie

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• To excavate is to open a book written in the language that the centuries have spoken into the earth.

  Spyridon Marinatos

  Book, Science, Earth

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• To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Two, Use, May

  "The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D". Book by James Boswell, 1791.

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• That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted.

  George Boole

  Learning, Expression, Reason

  George Boole (1854). “An Investigation of the Laws of Thought: On which are Founded the Mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities”, p.24

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• APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Mistake, Perfection, Programming Languages

  Edsger W. Dijkstra (2012). “Selected Writings on Computing: A personal Perspective”, p.130, Springer Science & Business Media

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• Art after all is but an extension of language to the expression of sensations too subtle for words.

  Robert Henri

  Art, Expression, Subtle

  "The art spirit".

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• Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Writing, Speak

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1977). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1852-1855”, p.78, Harvard University Press

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• The greatest single programming language ever designed

  Alan Kay

  Programming, Programming Languages, Lisp

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• Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

  Paul Engle

  Reading Poetry, Language And Power, Ordinary

  New York Times, February 17, 1957.

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• A thing well said will be wit in all languages.

  John Dryden

  Well Said, Wit, Wells

  'An Essay of Dramatic Poesy' (1668)

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• A man who can speak two languages is worth two men.

  Napoleon Hill

  Men, Two, Speak

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• Translation rewrites a foreign text in terms that are intelligible and interesting to readers in the receiving culture. Doing so is akin to committing an act of ethnocentric violence by uprooting the text from the language and culture that gave it life. Translating into current, standard English at once conceals that violence and homogenizes foreign cultures.

  Lawrence Venuti

  Interesting, Receiving, Culture

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• I had no idea what they were saying in Italian as a child, they spoke too quickly on the radio. But I realized that language was very funny.

  Dominic Chianese

  Children, Italian, Ideas

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• I hope one day when I say I'm from Estonia, people don't say: 'What? Where's that?'

  Carmen Kass

  People, One Day, Estonia

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• Speech sounds can be analyzed into fundamental units called phonemes; these move around like protozoa in a drop of water, and, like protozoa, join together and split up.

  L. Sprague de Camp

  Moving, Water, Together

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