LANGUAGE QUOTES III

quotations about language

Language quote

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.

GASTON BACHELARD

Fragments of a Poetics of Fire

Tags: Gaston Bachelard


The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Morning Yet on Creation Day

Tags: Chinua Achebe


He has strangled
His language in his tears.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Henry VIII

Tags: William Shakespeare


At the end of the day, good language is bold language.

FRANCESCO CLEMENTE

"Pamela Love and Francesco Clemente Reflect on Decades of Collaboration", Vogue, April 4, 2016


An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.

MARTIN BUBER

I and Thou

Tags: Martin Buber


Language is the source of misunderstandings.

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

attributed, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Great Quotes for All Occasions

Tags: Antoine de Saint-Exupery


Language is the sole instrument through which all life's activities are performed. Language is therefore not merely a picture of reality per se but also a willing instrument of the language-user to map the reality.

R. C. PRADHAN

Language, Reality, and Transcendence: An Essay on the Main Strands of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy


It requires a strong mind to bear up against several languages. Some persons have learnt so many, that they have ceased to think in any one.

ARTHUR HELPS

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd

Tags: Arthur Helps


The most difficult step in the study of language is the first step.

LEONARD BLOOMFIELD

Language


The human need for language is not simply for the transmission of meaning, it is at the same time listening to and affirming a person's existence.

GAO XINGJIAN

"An Interview with Gao Xingjian", BookBrowse

Tags: Gao Xingjian


Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

GEORGE ORWELL

The English People


Language is considered by some to be the distinguishing characteristic of humanity. No other animal is capable of the kind of linguistic complexity in sound, grammar, and meaning as humans. With well over one million words in the English language alone, this makes the range of our possible expression incalculably large. Many of the sentences you compose in your day-to-day conversations may never have been said before. Ever.

NICOLA BROWN

"How Language Complexity Invalidates a Formulaic Content Approach", Skyword, April 1, 2016


A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

attributed, Day's Collacon

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.

PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE

Letters Written by the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son

Tags: Philip Dormer Stanhope


Pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

MURIEL BARBERY

The Elegance of the Hedgehog


Language is easy for us to learn and use because language, like a living organism, has evolved in a symbiotic relationship with humans. Language has adapted to what our brains can do, rather than the other way around.

LINDA B. GLASER

"New book reintegrates the science of language", Cornell Chronicle, April 4, 2016


Language comes into being, like consciousness, from the basic need, from the scantiest intercourse with other human.

KARL MARX

The German Ideology

Tags: Karl Marx


for many people, language is inseparable from cultural identity since it is the means by which members of communities communicate with one another, and how individuals establish that they are, in fact, members of the same cultural community.

LILY WONG FILLMORE

"What Happens When Languages Are Lost? An Essay on Language Assimilation and Cultural Identity", Social Interaction, Social Context, and Language


We must now turn from considering the necessary struggle with language arising, as it were, from its very nature and the nature of the society it serves to the more ominous threat to its integrity brought about neither by its innate inadequacy nor yet by the incompetence and carelessness of its ordinary users, but rather engineered deliberately by those who will manipulate words for their own ends.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays


The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

"On Language", The American Democrat

Tags: James Fenimore Cooper