Language Quotes
-
He wished she knew his impressions; but he would as soon have thought of carrying an odour in a net as of attempting to convey the intangibilities of his feeling in the coarse meshes of language. So he remained silent.
-
Afrikaans is my first language, although you would never know, as my English accent has more of an American-British thing going on from all my years of travelling.
-
'Rednecks' always made me nervous to play, but I'm glad I wrote it and I continue to play it. It's just that the language is so rough.
-
Our German language has a word which in a magnificent way denotes conduct based on this spirit: doing one's duty [Pflichterfüllung]-which means serving the community instead of contenting oneself. We have a word for the basic disposition which underlies conduct of this kind in contrast to egoism and selfishness-idealism. By 'idealism' we mean only the ability of the individual to sacrifice himself for the whole, for his fellow men.
-
I write in the most classical French because this form is necessary for my novels: to translate the murky, floating, unsettling atmosphere I wanted them to have, I had to discipline it into the clearest, most traditional language possible.
-
Music is the unspoken language that can convey feelings more accurately than talking ever could.
-
We do not create marriage from scratch. Instead, in the elegant language of the marriage ceremony, we 'enter into the holy estate of matrimony.'
-
It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one's own.
-
Language usage always has a political context.
-
I didn't work hard to make Ruby perfect for everyone, because you feel differently from me. No language can be perfect for everyone. I tried to make Ruby perfect for me, but maybe it's not perfect for you. The perfect language for Guido van Rossum is probably Python.
-
I could never see a book written in a foreign language without the most ardent desire to read it.
-
Many Indians and Israelis seem set to elect, with untroubled consciences, those who speak the language of torturers and terrorists. More disturbingly, these corrupted democracies may increasingly prove the norm rather than the exception.
-
There was an exhibition in Munich in 1937, 'Degenerate Art,' which included work by Klee, Kandinsky, Beckmann and many others. The work was called 'sick' and put in the trash heap. The sentiments expressed toward contemporary art by Jesse Helms, Pat Robertson and Mayor Giuliani recall the language used by the Nazis.
-
Thank God, I have sort of a pan-European accent rather than Russian, which doesn't sound very pleasantly to Americans. For them, we speak with a rather rude pitch, and that might be our actors' problem there. Now I've begun working with language coaches in Los Angeles to get rid of the accent completely.
-
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second, and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.
-
Tangible language, which often tells more falsehoods than truths.
-
I want to keep talking about my people and my country in my own language.
-
In the era of imperialism, businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed as statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of succcessful businessmen.
-
I think Russia is a difficult country, and it's very difficult for people to adapt here, especially if they don't speak the language well.
-
However old-fashioned and right-wing this may sound, the American genius for language lies in understatement, in saying things simply, pointedly and quickly, and in making new and clean and swift what otherwise might be ponderous, round and slow.
-
My weapon has always been language, and I've always used it, but it has changed. Instead of shaping the words like knives now, I think they're flowers, or bridges.
-
It is very difficult to work in another language, and it is also very challenging.
-
It must be noted that it is often the colleague or direct disciple of a new thinker who gets stuck in literal interpretations of the work, tending to freeze the new ideas and language into an inflexible, static condition.
-
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
