Language Quotes - Page 5

• As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'Tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room

  Jeremy Collier

  Hands, Mind, Crowds

  Jeremy Collier (1969). “Essays Upon Several Moral Subjects: (1698-1709).”

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• Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.

  Samuel Johnson

  Enlargement, Stability, Quotations

  'A Dictionary of the English Language' (1755) preface (on citations of usage in a dictionary)

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• A tale should be judicious, clear, succinct; The language plain, and incidents well link'd; Tell not as new what ev'ry body knows; and, new or old, still hasten to a close.

  William Cowper

  Links, Body, Incidents

  'Conversation' (1782) l. 235

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• All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.

  Roland Barthes

  Sports, Song, School

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• I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don't study any more,- I have given it up.

  Mark Twain

  Clothes, Study, Umbrella

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.143, Courier Corporation

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• We need a president who's fluent in at least one language.

  Buck Henry

  Political, President, Needs

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means.

  Paul de Man

  Mean, Doe, Enough

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• I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter.

  Mark Twain

  Wells, Maniacs, Interpreter

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.3252, GENERAL PRESS

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• There's an aspect of human nature in which we want to think we're better than somebody else. They're a different color. They speak a different language. They have a different name for the Creator. Whatever it is, that makes it okay for me to hate them, to try to get some of their land or some of their resources.

  John Denver

  Hate, Thinking, Color

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• 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.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Long, Innocence, Pleasure

  Jean Baudrillard (1990). “Cool Memories”, p.66, Verso

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• It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

  Thomas Hardy

  Men, Feelings, Made

  'Far from the Madding Crowd' (1874) ch. 81

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• Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages

  Dave Barry

  Travel, Inspirational Life, Learning

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry's Greatest Hits”, p.259, Ballantine Books

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• As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

  Gore Vidal

  Communication, Cities, People

  Gore Vidal (2004). “Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia”, p.52, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

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• Perhaps of all the creations of man language is the most astonishing.

  Lytton Strachey

  Writing, Men, Creation Of Man

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• 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.

  Katherine Dunn

  Magic, Age, Trouble

  FaceBook post by Katherine Dunn from Jun 02, 2013

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• Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Views, Obscure, Garments

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• No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby - so helpless and so ridiculous.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Baby, Witty

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joel Porte (1982). “Emerson in His Journals”, p.104, Harvard University Press

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• As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action.

  Gore Vidal

  Election Time, Action, Propaganda

  Gore Vidal (2004). “Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia”, p.52, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

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• One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Country, Doe, Fatherland

  "Aveux et anathemes (Anathemas and Admirations)". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1987.

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• The most important things are the hardest to say

  Stephen King

  I Love You, Valentines Day, Communication

  Stephen King (2016). “Different Seasons”, p.309, Simon and Schuster

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• The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

  Hippocrates

  Writing, Plain Language, Use

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• Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons.

  Aldous Huxley

  Language Words, Levels, Able

  Aldous Huxley (2002). “Complete Essays: 1939-1956”, Ivan R Dee

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• Speech is the best show a man puts on.

  Benjamin Lee Whorf

  Men, Speech, Shows

  Benjamin Lee Whorf, John Bissell Carroll (1964). “Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf”, p.249, MIT Press

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• Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.

  Charles Scribner IV

  Reading, Aquariums, Soul

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• Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

  Karl Kraus

  Mother

  Karl Kraus (1977). “No Compromise: Selected Writings of Karl Kraus”, Frederick Ungar

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