Language Quotes - Page 9

• Translation presents not merely a paradigm but the utmost case of engaged literary interpretation

  John Felstiner

  Interpretation, Cases, Paradigm

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• Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

  Quentin Crisp

  Truth, Communication, Diplomatic Relations

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• Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

  James A. Baldwin

  Truth, Roots, Literature

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• Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

  George Orwell

  Witty, Peace, Truth

  "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

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• What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same.

  Antonio Porchia

  Doe, Lasts, English Language

  "Voices". Book by Antonio Porchia, 1943.

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• I can remember the lush spring excitement of language in childhood. Sitting in church, rolling it around my mouth like marbles--tabernacle and pharisee and parable, tresspass and Babylon and covenant.

  Penelope Lively

  Spring, Childhood, Church

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• If Language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done, remains undone.

  Confucius

  Done, Said, Remains

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• It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code... obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Artist, Obscurity, Use

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• Language is the archives of history.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  History, Historical, Archives

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.457, Library of America

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• Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Communication, Say Anything, Use

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.435, Рипол Классик

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• There is in every child a painstaking teacher so skillful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one teaches them anything.

  Maria Montessori

  Teacher, Children, Learning

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• Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

  Samuel Johnson

  Science, Ideas, Instruments

  'A Dictionary of the English Language' (1755) preface.

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• How charmed I am when I overhear a German word which I understand!

  Mark Twain

  German Language, Charmed

  Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.367, Jazzybee Verlag

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• It is only possible to speak in the language and in the spirit of one's time.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Spirit, Speak

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• Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Mixtures, Statements

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• Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

  Henry James

  Beautiful, Summer, Time

  Quoted in Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (1934)

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• Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

  Carl Sandburg

  Work, Writing, Carpe Diem

  In New York Times 13 Feb. 1959, p. 21

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• The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

  Lewis Thomas

  Hands, Matter, Humans

  "A Long Line of Cells: Collected Essays".

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• The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Oracles, Literature, Calm

  Henry David Thoreau (1862). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. By Henry D. Thoreau”, p.133

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• Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

  Aldous Huxley

  Communication, Humility, Reality

  "The Doors of Perception". Book by Aldous Huxley (p. 22-24), 1954.

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• When someone says, "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I want done," give him a lollipop.

  Alan Perlis

  Funny Inspirational, Giving, Needs

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• The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Children, Communication, Pygmalion

  Pygmalion (1916) preface

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• I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is the language I don't understand.

  Edward Victor Appleton

  Funny, Music, Sarcastic

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• The individual's whole experience is built upon the plan of his language.

  Henri Delacroix

  Communication, Thought Provoking, Individual

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• I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Real, Book, Broads

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.103, Harvard University Press

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