Language Quotes

Hominid and human evolution took place over millions and not billions of years, but with the emergence of language there was a further acceleration of time and the rate of change.

My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc.

Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.

On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.

Greek was very much a live language, and a language still unconscious of grammar, not, like ours, dominated by definitions and trained upon dictionaries.

The best way in the world to deceive believers is to cloak a message in religious language and declare that it conveys some new insight from God.

Both of my parents are professors and everyone in my family has some fabulous degree of something or another and I couldn't get into college because I didn't know a language.

Human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.

Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.

Though language forms the preacher, 'Tis good works make the man.

This is the problem with language, and this is what makes silent movies fun, because the connection with them, me or the audience is not with the language. There's no question of interpretation of what we are saying it's just about feeling. You create your own story.

I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly.

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that is, I try to express complicated but I hope real emotions as simply as possible. But that doesn't mean the poems are simple, just that they are as truthful as I can make them.

I took some classes in sign language when I was in my early teens because I was told that I would be completely deaf very early. But I never really wanted to learn.

Well it was not exactly a dissertation in logic, at least not the kind of logic you would find in Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica for instance. It looked more like mathematics; no formalized language was used.

Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.

The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.