Language Quotes
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The rules of English grammar are largely an artificial construct with little or no bearing on the language as it is spoke.
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I first listen to someone who speaks the language and who reads the lyrics to me. I pay great attention to pronunciation. Once I hear the words spoken, I write the song lines phonetically in Hindi and then sing. By the grace of god, my songs in other languages – including Bengali – have been appreciated. People say they are good and the words have been correctly pronounced.
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I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.
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The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to be so firmly set that, standing upon it, it could lift the rest of the world off its hinges and make itself master of it. To the extent that man has for long ages believed in the concepts and names of things as in aeternae veritates he has appropriated to himself that pride by which he raised himself above the animal: he really thought that in language he possessed knowledge of the world.
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Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.
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I'm not somebody who is always comfortable with language that implies I've got a monopoly on the truth, or that my faith is automatically transferable to others.
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A text conversation is a short exchange of often grossly truncated language that corresponds to a thought made all the more shallow by the process.
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Music is the one universal language. It's your best friend when the chips are down, and it's better than any energy drink when you're feeling it.
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Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.
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The writer cannot abandon himself simply to inspiration, and feign innocence vis a vis language, because language is never innocent.
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The force of a language does not consist of rejecting what is foreign but of swallowing it.
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I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity?
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One limits oneself in this country if you come as a legal immigrant to this country and you choose to only speak your language whether it be Polish or Russian like many of my own relatives who came here if you speak only Russian and Polish you're limiting your opportunities in the United States.
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Art is one of the dirtiest words in our language; it's mucked up with all kinds of meanings. There's the art of plumbing; there's the art of almost anything that you can say.
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I am just fascinated by music and I want to know how to identify all the things I love about it; to me music theory is like learning another language and then being able to explain how much you love something more clearly.
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I definitely do see language serving its users, and when it no longer serves them we need to look for new words.
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Russian is a very deceptive language, because it looks easy at first: it's like setting out for a gentle stroll and realizing that you've committed yourself to scaling Himalayan peaks.
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Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express.
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Sign language is the noblest gift God has given to deaf people.
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Painting is... a richer language than words... Painting operates through signs which are not abstract and incorporeal like words. The signs of painting are much closer to the objects themselves.
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I had the luck that my parents educated me in three languages. With my mother I spoke Dutch, with my father Italian, and in the school I learned German. But my host language is Italian.
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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 inspired by playwrights, novelists, poets: The value of language has been a lifelong passion of mine. I enjoy it. I'm good at it.
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As far as nonviolence and Spiritual Activism, Marshall Rosenberg is it! Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, is essential reading for anyone who wants to improve their communication skills. Applying the concepts within the book will help guide the reader towards a more loving, compassionate, and nonviolent way of understanding and functioning with others, and foster more compassion in the world. I highly recommend this book.
