Language Quotes - Page 31

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

  James F. Cooper

  Ambition, Simplicity, Abuse

  "The American Democrat: Or, Hints on the Social and Civic Relations of the United States of America". Book by James Fenimore Cooper, 1838.

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• If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Animal, Perfect, One Day

  Jean Baudrillard (1990). “Cool Memories”, p.84, Verso

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• I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sea, Heaven, Speech

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1960). “Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1841-1843”, p.357, Harvard University Press

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• Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.

  Octavio Paz

  Fall, Past, Men

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.48, Arcade Publishing

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• Why has mankind had such a craving to be imposed upon? Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won't last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness. Even Michelangelo becomes at last a lump and a burden and a bore. It is so hard to see past him.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Art, Past, Long

  D. H. Lawrence, Simonetta de Filippis (2002). “Sketches of Etruscan Places and Other Italian Essays”, p.33, Cambridge University Press

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• It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.

  Nathaniel Borenstein

  Writing, Baghdad, Ethics

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• A man who can speak two languages is worth two men.

  Napoleon Hill

  Men, Two, Speak

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• The head cannot take in more than the seat can endure.

  Winston Churchill

  Endure, Seats

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• There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them.

  Oscar Wilde

  Animal, Action, Emotion

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1466, Delphi Classics

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• Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Ignorant, Foreign Language, Knows

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• Who is Mike Judge? Let me think. The only way I could possibly answer that question would be in a nonverbal fashion. I think I could do an interpretive dance that would answer that question for you.

  Mike Judge

  Dance, Fashion, Thinking

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• Body language is essential for an actress, even if you don't use your body in an athletic way. Just to be free, to use it like your voice. A body can be small and have incredible violence. A body talks.

  Anne Parillaud

  Voice, Athletic, Essentials

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• Language is surely too small a vessel to contain these emotions of mind and body that have somehow awakened a response in the spirit.

  Radclyffe Hall

  Mind, Body, Spirit

  Radclyffe Hall (1956). “The well of loneliness”, Anchor

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• In this respect, I suppose I'm the total opposite of Garry [Kasparov]. With his very emotive body language at the [chess]board he shows and displays all his emotions. I don't.

  Vladimir Kramnik

  Opposites, Boards, Body

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• I can't just tell the guys I want the ball, I have to do it with my body language.

  LaMarcus Aldridge

  Guy, Balls, Body

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• A blur of blinks, taps, jiggles, pivots and shifts ... the body language of a man wishing urgently to be elsewhere.

  Edward R. Murrow

  Men, Wish, Body

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• I want guys who want to be here. I want guys who are energetic and passionate. I didn't see any passion from Todd. You could tell form his body language that he didn't want to be here.

  Perry Florio

  Passion, Guy, Body

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• The mood was terrible. You could see it in everybody's eyes. The body language was just defeated. When they put me in I was hoping I could give us some energy and try to bring us back.

  Billy Campbell

  Eye, Giving, Trying

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• Verbal and nonverbal activity is a unified whole, and theory and methodology should be organized or created to treat it as such.

  Kenneth Lee Pike

  Methodology, Should, Treats

  Kenneth Lee Pike (1967). “Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior”, Mouton De Gruyter

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• To use two languages familiarly and without contaminating one by the other, is very difficult; and to use more than two is hardly to be hoped. The prizes which some have received for their multiplicity of languages may be sufficient to excite industry, but can hardly generate confidence.

  Samuel Johnson

  Two, Use, May

  "The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D". Book by James Boswell, 1791.

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• What is a nation without a mother tongue?

  Jack Edwards

  Mother, Tongue, Nations

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• An immune system of enormous complexity is present in all vertebrate animals. When we place a population of lymphocytes from such an animal in appropriate tissue culture fluid, and when we add an antigen, the lymphocytes will produce specific antibody molecules, in the absense of any nerve cells. I find it astonishing that the immune system embodies a degree of complexity which suggests some more or less superficial though striking analogies with human language, and that this cognitive system has evolved and functions without assistance of the brain.

  Niels Kaj Jerne

  Animal, Cells, Brain

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• By a generative grammar I mean simply a system of rules that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences. Obviously, every speaker of a language has mastered and internalized a generative grammar that expresses his knowledge of his language. This is not to say that he is aware of the rules of the grammar or even that he can become aware of them, or that his statements about his intuitive knowledge of the language are necessarily accurate.

  Noam Chomsky

  Mean, Way, Description

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• Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components... the syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation. The first of these is interpreted by the semantic component; the second, by the phonological component.

  Noam Chomsky

  Numbers, Three, Firsts

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• If it were possible to transfer the methods of physical or of biological science directly to the study of man, the transfer would long ago have been made ... We have failed not for lack of hypotheses which equate man with the rest of the universe, but for lack of a hypothesis (short of animism) which provides for the peculiar divergence of man ... Let me now state my belief that the peculiar factor in man which forbids our explaining his actions upon the ordinary plane of biology is a highly specialized and unstable biological complex, and that this factor is none other than language.

  Leonard Bloomfield

  Men, Long Ago, Peculiar

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