Language Quotes
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We are reaping the fruits of ten thousand, fifty thousand years of sowing of the fields of mind. And it is being dropped into our laps for us to create human-machine interfacing, control of genetic material, redefinition of social reality, re engineering of languages, revisioning of the planetary ecology, all these things fall upon us.
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There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.
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The older you get, the more power you have with language as a writer, which means that you have to be extra responsible for what you say, whether it's in print or in front of a microphone, because those words can go out and kill or go out and plant seeds for peace.
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Language is the light of the mind.
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Mere elegance of language can produce at best but an empty renown.
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Linguistically, and hence conceptually, the things in sharpest focus are the things that are public enough to be talked of publicly, common and conspicuous enough to be talked of often, and near enough to sense to be quickly identified and learned by name; it is to these that words apply first and foremost.
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Language is the spiritual exhalation of the nation.
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Nature has a language of its own, or maybe those who have lived long in solitude read in it their own unconscious inner feelings and mysterious foreknowledge.
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When you become a driver, they don't tell you that you have to switch languages. The drivers have their own language and they don't tell you that as girls. How am I supposed to know that blinking light means something? There are all these little languages that you have to know, but you don't know.
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Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people. Asking in broken Italian which train we are supposed to board at the Venice railway station is far from useless. Indeed, it is better to do that than to remain uncertain and silent and end up back in Budapest rather than in Milan.
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A scientist with a poet's command of language, Cristina Eisenberg writes with precision and passion . . . takes her reader on a breathtaking, sometimes heartbreaking tour of the planet from the Gulf of Maine to the Amazonian rain forests, the tropical coral reefs to old growth forests of the Northwest as well as rivers, lakes, and wetlands. I found the wealth of information not only accessible but riveting . . . Eisenberg's powerful, beautifully written book . . . has the potential to open many people's eyes, minds, and hearts.
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It's difficult to find a house with no map at 3 o'clock in the morning in a foreign country and where you don't speak the language.
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There is only one way to degrade mankind permanently and that is to destroy language.
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Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.
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But, after all, the sciences have made progress, because philosophers have applied themselves with more attention to observe, and have communicated to their language that precision and accuracy which they have employed in their observations: In correcting their language they reason better.
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I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way.
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A language which we do not know is a fortress sealed.
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Words have no language which can utter the secrets of love; and beyond the limits of expression is the expounding of desire.
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In my father's language: "To create something out of nothing." That possibility exists in India even in old-world sectors like agriculture.
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Is there a phrase in the English language more fraught with menace than a tax audit?
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Language is wine upon the lips.
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The four most powerful words in the English language - please, thanks, sorry and why.
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I'm a big believer in rehearsal and a big believer in the actors being able to find the material themselves and identify with the beats themselves without us having to stick to the actual language of the script, just for them to understand what each scene is about.
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His language was, as I say, under great provocation, violent and unusual. He had a trick of using words which never were on land or sea, and illustrating his instruction or his admonition with the quaintest phraseology.
