LANGUAGE QUOTES III
quotations about language
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
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
A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
GASTON BACHELARD
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire
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
Language is the source of misunderstandings.
ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY
attributed, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Great Quotes for All Occasions
He has strangled
His language in his tears.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Henry VIII
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
An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.
MARTIN BUBER
I and Thou
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
The most difficult step in the study of language is the first step.
LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
Language
A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is also ignorant of his own language.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language.
NOAH WEBSTER
preface, Dictionary
Pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.
MURIEL BARBERY
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
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
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
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
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
Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
GEORGE ORWELL
The English People
Speech is the best show a man puts on.
BENJAMIN LEE WHORF
Language, Thought and Reality
Language most shows a man; speak that I may see thee; it springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us, and is the image of the parent of it, the mind. No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech.
BEN JONSON
Timber: Or, Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter