Language Quotes
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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.
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Language is a virus from outer space.
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Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels.
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Language exists to communicate whatever it can communicate. Some things it communicates so badly that we never attempt to communicate them by words if any other medium is available.
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I loved languages, and loved learning languages. It was fantastic. But I was alone there. I remember that time as a real Virginia Woolf time. More than any language it was her language that influenced me.
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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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Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.
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The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its caution. It thus reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. In the language of morality: Humility.
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I knew that all South Indian language films were first made in Chennai and that Tamil Nadu is one of the biggest film-producing centres in the country. I wanted to be part of films here.
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I love the French language... it's a delightful language, especially to curse with. It's like whopping your ass with silk.
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Every drop of human blood contains a history book written in the language of our genes.
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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.
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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.
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Von Neumann languages do not have useful properties for reasoning about programs. Axiomatic and denotational semantics are precise tools for describing and understanding conventional programs, but they only talk about them and cannot alter their ungainly properties. Unlike von Neumann languages, the language of ordinary algebra is suitable both for stating its laws and for transforming an equation into its solution, all within the "language."
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The real technology -behind all our other technologies- is language. It actually creates the world our consciousness lives in.
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Whether it's a professional, academic keeping people out by using certain mystifying language, or technologists presenting their work as incredibly complicated, no one can understand it (especially not "moms," who are always invoked as the ultimate know-nothings, which is incredibly insulting to a whole lot of people).
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The language I have learnt these forty years, My native English, now I must forgo; And now my tongue's use is to me no more Than an unstringed viol or a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony.
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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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If you can take photographs with language, I'm taking one right now.
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He is not to them what he is to me," I thought: "he is not of their kind. I believe he is of mine- I am sure he is- I feel akin to him- I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him.
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People think that digital language is a fixed language, but it's not: it's very fluid. It's like I'm doing a painting where the paint refuses to dry.
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The superior man undergoes three changes. Looked at from a distance, he appears stern; when approached, he is mild; when he is heard to speak, his language is firm and decided.
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How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.
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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.
