Language Quotes - Page 6

• We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race.

  Kofi Annan

  Acceptance, Race, Skin Color

  Twitter post from Sep 03, 2016

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• Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Writing, Thoughtful, Reality

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• Of all social institutions language is least amenable to initiative. It blends with the life of society, and the latter, inert by nature, is a prime conservative force.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Conservative, Initiative, Social

  Ferdinand de Saussure, Wade Baskin (2011). “Course in General Linguistics”, p.74, Columbia University Press

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• The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

  George Orwell

  Foolish, Easier, Translations

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.270, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Language helps form the limits of our reality.

  Dale Spender

  Reality, Limits, Helping

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• Bilingualism is for me the fundamental problem of linguistics.

  Roman Jakobson

  Fundamentals, Bilingualism, Problem

  Roman Jakobson (1971). “Selected Writings: Word and Language”, p.561, Walter de Gruyter

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• When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.

  Niels Bohr

  Inspirational, Creating, Poetry

  Niels Bohr's response to questions on the nature of language during his first meeting with Werner Heisenberg (Summer 1920), as quoted in "Discussions about Language", 1933, in Robert J. Pranger "Defense Implications of International Indeterminacy" (p. 11), 1972, and in Steve Giles "Theorizing Modernism: Essays in Critical Theory" (p. 28), 1993.

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• Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.

  Walt Disney

  Communication, Moving Forward, Speak

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• As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings.

  Boris Pasternak

  Writing, Copying, Might

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• Fie, fie upon her!
  There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
  Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
  At every joint and motive of her body.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Eye, Feet

  'Troilus And Cressida' (1602) act 4, sc. 5, l. 54

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• Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

  William Penn

  Writing, Language Words, Plain Language

  William Penn (1792). “Fruits of Solitude: In Reflections and Maxims Relating to the Conduct of Human Life”, p.130

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• He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Book, Communication, Humor

  Abraham Lincoln (1992). “The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln”, Plume

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• There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the earth.

  Elias Canetti

  Dying, Earth, Ugly

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• Grasp the subject, the words will follow.

  Cato the Elder

  Communication, Self Improvement, Public Speaking

  Quoted in Caius Julius Victor, Ars Rhetorica

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• Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows Where noun, and verb, and participle grows.

  John Dryden

  Tree, Verbs, Nouns

  John Dryden, Joseph Warton, John Warton (1811). “The Poetical Works of John Dryden: Containing Original Poems, Tales and Translations”, p.353

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• Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Use, Company, Pedantry

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1834). “Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions”, p.97

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• The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Character, Men, Expression

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.7

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• We live at the level of our language. Whatever we can articulate we can imagine or understand or explore.

  Ellen Gilchrist

  Levels, Imagine

  Ellen Gilchrist (2013). “Falling Through Space”, p.26, Open Road Media

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• We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

  Abigail Adams

  Communication, Language Words, Diversity

  Abigail Adams, John Adams, L. H. Butterfield, Marc Friedlaender, Mary-Jo Kline (1975). “The Book of Abigail and John: Selected Letters of the Adams Family, 1762-1784”, p.80, UPNE

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• Language should fulfill your individual existence as a wholesome human being... Language should be more than just getting by.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Individual, Should, Existence

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• Translations are a partial and precious documentation of the changes the text suffers.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Suffering, Documentation, Translations

  Jorge Luis Borges (1999). “Selected Non-Fictions”, Penguin Group USA

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• Language is the biggest barrier to human progress because language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Old perceptions are frozen into language and force us to look at the world in an old fashioned way.

  Edward de Bono

  Communication, Ignorance, Perception

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• The eyes have one language everywhere.

  George Herbert

  Eye, Vision, Eye Color

  George Herbert (1861). “The poetical works of George Herbert and Reginald Heber: With memoirs. Eight engravings on steel”, p.272

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• Translation is at best an echo.

  George Henry Borrow

  Echoes, Translations

  George Henry Borrow (1851). “Lavengro: The Scholar--the Gypsy--the Priest”, p.151

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• In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Hypnosis, Speech

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “Rhetoric”, p.148, Aeterna Press

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