Language Quotes
Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by comparison, and the metaphors of language derive therefrom.
It's one thing to just play a tune, or play a program of music, but it's another thing to practically create a new language of music, which is what 'Kind of Blue' did.
My plays have been translated into all of the official languages of South Africa except Afrikaans.
We like to assume that language is a purely human property, our exclusive possession, and that everything else is basically mute.
At grief so deep the tongue must wag in vain; the language of our sense and memory lacks the vocabulary of such pain.
As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language from corruption.
The official language of the State of Illinois shall be known hereafter as the American language, and not the English language.
Anybody can have ideas-the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A nation should guard its language more than its territories, 'tis a surer barrier and a more important frontier than mountain or river.
Silence is no weakness of language. It is, on the contrary, its strength. It is the weakness of words not to know this.
In the original language, 'Fear the Lord' doesn't mean be afraid. It means sustaining a joyful, astonished awe, and wonder before Him.
Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.
We already knew that kids learned computer technology more easily than adults, It is as if children were waiting all these centuries for someone to invent their native language.
The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms.
Literature speaks the language of the imagination, and the study of literature is supposed to train and improve the imagination.
Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.
I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.
A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
The most significant conversations of our lives occur in silence.
Never trust the translation or interpretation of something without first trusting its interpreter.
There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.
Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.
Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language.
I'm bugged because I can't believe I can't speak every language there is. But I feel I can when I sit and am with somebody, and I can dance for them. Because dance is dialogue without language.
He said that if culture is a house, then language was the key to the front door; to all the rooms inside. Without it, he said, you ended up wayward, without a proper home or a legitimate identity.
I am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.
It is the body, subject to the harmony of the steps it is executing, which speaks. And it speaks to the heart in as direct a language as does music.
Our common language is English. And our common task is to ensure that our non-English-speaking children learn this common language.
Languages exist by arbitrary institutions and conventions among peoples; words, as the dialecticians tell us, do not signify naturally, but at our pleasure.
In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child.