Language Quotes - Page 30

• A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.

  Victor Hugo

  Doe, Movement, March

  Victor Hugo (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Victor Hugo (Illustrated)”, p.12486, Delphi Classics

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• All translation is a compromise - the effort to be literal and the effort to be idiomatic.

  Benjamin Jowett

  Effort, Compromise, Translations

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• It is neither the best nor the worst things in a book that defy translation.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Book, Worst, Translations

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• Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.

  Thomas Paine

  Mean, Information, Used

  Thomas Paine (2016). “The Writings of Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason”, p.86, Thomas Paine

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• The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.

  Steven Pinker

  Baby, Age, Tourists

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• A translation can never equal the original; it can approach it, and its quality can only be judged as to accuracy by how close it gets.

  Gregory Rabassa

  Quality, Equal, Accuracy

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• A translator is essentially a reader and we all read differently, except that a translator's reading remains in unchanging print

  Gregory Rabassa

  Reading, Unchanging, Print

  Gregory Rabassa (2006). “If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents”, p.89, New Directions Publishing

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• I have always maintained that translation is essentially the closest reading one can possibly give a text. The translator cannot ignore "lesser" words, but must consider every jot and tittle.

  Gregory Rabassa

  Reading, Giving, Translators

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• Translation is a disturbing craft because there is precious little certainty about what we are doing, which makes it so difficult in this age of fervent belief and ideology, this age or greed and screed.

  Gregory Rabassa

  Greed, Age, Crafts

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• The gift of language is the single human trait that marks us all genetically, setting us apart from the rest of life.

  Lewis Thomas

  Rest Of Life, Mark, Humans

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• A national language is a band of national union.

  Noah Webster

  Band, Unions, Translations

  Noah Webster (1951). “Dissertations on the English Language”

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• It is useless to read Greek in translation; translators can but offer us a vague equivalent.

  Virginia Woolf

  Greek, Useless, Offers

  Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee (2000). “A room of one's own and other essays”

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• One forgets words as one forgets names. One's vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Vocabulary, Names, Needs

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• In the lives of individuals and societies, language is a factor of greater importance than any other. For the study of language to remain solely the business of a handful of specialists would be a quite unacceptable state of affairs.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Would Be, Study, Affair

  Ferdinand de Saussure (2013). “Course in General Linguistics”, p.8, A&C Black

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• The most important word in the language of the working class is "solidarity."

  Harry Bridges

  Class, Unity, Important

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• I thought it was respectful to each country to sing in their language.

  Nana Mouskouri

  Country, Respectful

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• We are at a time in our country's history that inclusive language is better than exclusive language.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Inclusion, Exclusive

  "Senator Obama Says Dean Using 'Religion to Divide'" by Marc Morano, www.christianheadlines.com. June 9, 2005.

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• On the contrary a film can promote the idea of change without any political message whatsoever but in its form and language can tell people that they can change their lives and contribute to progressive changes in the world.

  Wim Wenders

  Change, Ideas, People

  ""The culture of independent film criticism has gone down the drain"". Interview with Richard Phillips, www.wsws.org. January 10, 2000.

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• The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Inspirational, Writing, Politics

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• There is no such thing as the Queen's English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!

  Mark Twain

  Queens, Hands, Gone

  Following the Equator ch. 24, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" (1897)

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• To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost -that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization -is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.

  Victor Hugo

  Men, Civilization, Complicated

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Philosophical, Vocabulary, People

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• The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Lying, Pride, Animal

  Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.16, Cambridge University Press

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• Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.

  Virginia Woolf

  Expression, Giving, Sound

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• The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay

  E. B. White

  Needs, Use, Cows

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