Language Quotes
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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.
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The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.
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Language, after all, is organic. You can't force words into existence. You can't force new meanings into words. And some words can't or won't or shouldn't be laundered or neutered. Language develops naturally.
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Typography is what language looks like.
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When this war is over, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell!
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Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.
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A tale should be judicious, clear, succinct; The language plain, and incidents well link'd; Tell not as new what ev'ry body knows; and, new or old, still hasten to a close.
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With some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own.
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I sing only in Meronian - my own language - but there are also elements of English and Finnish languages in our songs. When we use the spiritual Meronian language, the word 'international' doesn't do justice to our band. This kind of psychic language's means of communication can reach galaxies beyond our planet, not to mention the other living and inanimate entities of our own planet.
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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.
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Language was such a profoundly new evolutionary innovation that our brains had to be completely redesigned in order to handle it.
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I'm not a lawyer, and maybe I should have used more specific legal language.
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Regardless of whether you speak the language or are familiar with a culture, the picture should hold up.
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When you lose a spouse, you're a widow or widower; when you lose your parents, you're an orphan. When you lose a child, there's no word in the English language for that position, that place that you're left.
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The wonderful thing about writing for theatre is you can go anywhere you want with the language. There are no limits. With film, they frown on language - it's always 'Too many words.'
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One of the noblest words in our language is "grace," defined as "unearned blessing." We live by grace far more than by anything else. Accordingly, I find that the one thing which I want to put into practice in my own life is the conscious and deliberate habit of finding someone to thank.
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I do that in whatever language of the country I'm in, because the audience appreciate it.
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The whole world has changed, so you just stay current with the world. There's nothing different in my language of how I say things.
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Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.
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We cannot stem linguistic change, but we can drag our feet. If each of us were to defy Alexander Pope and be the last to lay the old aside, it might not be a better world, but it would be a lovelier language.
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There was only a language of families, a tongue woven from a lifetime of shared experiences. Its vocabulary consisted of gestures and curt sentences, incomprehensible to all outsiders. Inside, it wasn't difficult to translate at all.
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Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don't know what to say about what I paint, really.
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Even if language is a living evolving organism, we don't have to embrace all the changes that occur during our lifetimes. If language is so alive, it can get sick.
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Men know almost nothing about desire, they think it has to do with sexual activity or can be discharged that way. But sex is a substitute, like money or language. Sometimes I just want to stop seeing.
