Language Quotes
Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.Johnson
How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.Black Hawk
The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.Ernest Hemingway
Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.John Erskine
Thought is the blossom language the bud action the fruit behind it.Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling; The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.George Du Maurie
Only a novel... in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
The language of friendship is not words, but meanings. It is an intelligence about language.Henry David Thoreau
When thoughts fails of words, they find imagination waiting at their elbow to teach a new language without words.Author Unknown
No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.George Bernard Shaw
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.Samuel Johnson
Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.Mark Hopkins, The Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer. Be what you say; and, within the rules of prudence, say what you are.Alford
A different language is a different vision of life.Federico Fellini
I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.Jane Wagne
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.Carl Sandburg, New York Times Feb. 13, 1959
Neither can embellishments of language be found without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can thoughts be made to shine without the light of language.Cicero
Language is a living, kicking, growing, flitting, evolving reality, and the teacher should spontaneously reflect its vibrant and protean qualities.John A. Rassias
BASIC - A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.Anon.
Words are the leaves of the tree of language, of which, if some fall away, a new succession takes their place.Field Marshall John French
If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.Doug Larson
Accent is the soul of language it gives to it both feeling and truth.Jean Jacques Rousseau
The most heroic word in all languages is revolution.Eugene Debs
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.Samuel Johnson
Duty then is the sublimest word in the English language. You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more. You should never wish to do less.Robert E. Lee
We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.Henry David Thoreau
Grammar and logic free language from being at the mercy of the tone of voice. Grammar protects us against misunderstanding the sound of an uttered name; logic protects us against what we say have double meaning.Rosenstock - Huessy
I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.Lily Tomlin
Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.Robert Benchley
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.George Orwell
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.Martha Graham
To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language.George Santayana
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagne
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.Henry David Thoreau
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.Oliver Wendell Holmes
Experience becomes possible because of language.Noam Chomsky, Ruth Anshen, Biography of an Idea (Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell Limited, 1986), pg. 196
A filthy mouth will not utter decent language.Chinese Prove
