Language Quotes

I just don't like big guys who speak cryptically and act like they understand the language better than me.

Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.

The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.

Expression and communication in the peak–experiences tend often to become poetic, mythical, and rhapsodic, as if this were the natural kind of language to express such states of being.

Similarly, although we use prepositional phrases when we write, we apparently don't write more effectively when we can label our language in these ways.

I became aware that all sounds can make meaningful language.

No language is rude that can boast polite writers.

Music is truly the universal language, and when it is excellently expressed how deeply it moves our souls

...For the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies.

Freedom of expression is not absolute. Countries have laws that define the framework for exercising this right and which, for instance, condemn racist language.

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension of notions too general for its existing language.

It is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.

If you really want people to pay attention to how you feel, you need to express your feelings in language that's worth reading.

I think English is a fantastic, rich and musical language, but of course your mother tongue is the most important for an actor

Metaphor is the only possible language available to religion because it alone is honest about Mystery.

To be honest, I couldn't hold a conversation with anybody in any language other than English - and that's a struggle sometimes!

Don't tell your friends about your indigestion. "How are you" is a greeting, not a question.

The habit of pleasing by flattery makes a language soft; the fear of offending by truth makes it circuitous and conventional.

Dance is the pure language of the soul - it's been with us from the very beginning.

As we said in the preface to the first edition, C "wears well as one's experience with it grows." With a decade more experience, we still feel that way.

There is some mysterious thing that goes on whereby, in the process of playing Shakespeare continuously, actors are surprised by the way the language actually acts on them.

In a language, in the system of language, there are only differences. Therefore, a taxonomical operation an undertake the systematic, statistical, and classificatory inventory of a language.

Silence is the only language of the realized. Practice moderation in speech.

Take all that is given whether wealth, love or language, nothing comes by mistake and with good digestion all can be turned to health.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

Language is the house of the truth of Being.

Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.

Words belong to those who use them only till someone else steals them back.

The trouble with words is that you never know whose mouths they've been in.

You have to fall in love with hanging around words.

I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.

The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance.

The language of the heart is mankind's main common language.

Music is a great energizer. It's a language everybody knows.

The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language.

Translation is the art of failure.

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.

I think when we engage in language we are engaging in something that is specifically and primally human.

Language is capable of becoming the objective repository of vast accumulations of meaning and experience, which it can then preserve in time and transmit to following generations.

A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.

Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.

The language of labels is like paper money, issued irresponsibly, with nothing of intrinsic value behind it, that is, with no effort of the intelligence to see, to really apprehend.

We live in our language like blind men walking on the edge of an abyss. This language is laden with future catastrophes. The day will come when it will turn against those who speak it.

Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy.

Does inadequacy not characterize all that we make use of to perceive and describe the world? Are the signs of language not just as inadequate, albeit differently, as are images?

I look forward to my first visit to Israel. Music is a universal language that is meant to unify audiences in peace and love, and that is the spirit of our show.

language is never neutral

The liberation of language is rooted in the liberation of ourselves.

More good code has been written in languages denounced as "bad'' than in languages proclaimed "wonderful'' - much more.

Photography is my only language.