Language Quotes
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
Jonathan Swift
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I draw because words are too unpredictable. I draw because words are too limited. If you speak and write in English, or Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, then only a certain percentage of human beings will get your meaning. But when you draw a picture everybody can understand it. If I draw a cartoon of a flower, then every man, woman, and child in the world can look at it and say, "That's a flower.
Sherman Alexie
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I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.
Jack Prelutsky
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The questioner has to come to an end. It is the questioner that creates the answer; and the questioner comes into being from the answer, otherwise there is no questioner.
U.G. Krishnamurti
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…. Query: How contrive not to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language on doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.
Albert Camus
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I am now completing research supported by NSF and NEH that is mapping changes in the English language through all of North America, for both mainstream and minority communities.
William Labov
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Years ago I went to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and did what all tourists there do: wrote some words on a scrap of paper that I tucked into a crevice in the wall. When I closed my eyes and touched my head to the warm stone, it came to me: "All language is prayer." This must be so. Who is it we are speaking to when we speak to anyone? To that person, and also past him or her to Out There. If there is language, it means there is the possibility of being heard, being met, being loved. And reaching out to be heard, met, or loved is a holy act. Language is holy.
Zoketsu Norman Fischer
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The real technology -behind all our other technologies- is language. It actually creates the world our consciousness lives in.
Andrei Codrescu
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Since the classical language has an easy grammar and limited vocabulary, a few months should suffice for the mastering of it.
Arthur Waley
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I had to struggle with the language. I can understand Hindi now, but I still can't communicate. And things get lost in translation; I feel rejected all the time.
Nargis Fakhri
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Opinions of language are as interesting as opinions of arithmetic.
P. J. O'Rourke
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I was taken by William Burroughs’ presence and intelligence from the first time I was introduced to him, by Lester Bangs in 1975. He was thrilling to listen to. When you heard him speak, you felt that you were privy to such a rare mind. Even in small-talk, he spoke with perfect economy of language. His shoots with me were very collaborative and it was an incredible opportunity to be able to photograph him over the course of twenty years.
Kate Simon
