Language Quotes
If meaning lies even partially in usage, then you subtly alter the language every time you use it. You couldn't leave it intact if you tried
Brian Christian
Every form of power comes down to language. In law, there's all kinds of words you don't know if you're not a lawyer and that gives them power. In business, it's the same thing.
Anthony Robbins
While the business of education in Europe consists in lectures upon the ruins of Palmyra and the antiquities of Herculaneum , or in disputes about Hebrew points, Greek particles, or the accent and quantity of the Roman language, the youth of America will be employed in acquiring those branches of knowledge which increase the conveniences of life.
Benjamin Rush
I write poetry. It comes naturally to me, but from a technical point of view it forces me to pay close attention to language and to scan.
Rita Mae Brown
Donna E. Smyth - adventures with words; she is always doing something new and unique. Beginning with her visceral morality, her stories are startling, nerve wracking, provocative: she combines Angela Carter's beautiful style with Patricia Highsmith's malevolent atmospheres. Smyth shatters clichs and dismisses mere sociology. She knows that pleasure is besieged by terror. She tells us what we don't want to know, but need to know. Smyth's writing disturbs us, enrichingly, because truth can never be at peace with language.
George Elliott Clarke
There is no little vigour and force added to words, when they are delivered in a neat and fine way, and somewhat out of the ordinary road, common and dull language relishing more of the clown than the gentleman. But herein also affectation must be avoided; it being better for a man by a native and clear eloquence to express himself, than by those words which may smell either of the lamp or inkhorn.
Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury
When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation. For what do terms used without skill or meaning, which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote but a people listless, supine, and ripe for servitude?
John Milton
The language of art is celestial in origin and can only be understood by the chosen.
El Greco
What do I think happens when we die? I think we enter into another stage of existence or another state of consciousness that is so extraordinarily different from the reality we have here in the physical world that the language we have is not yet adequate to describe this other state of existence or consciousness. Based on what I have heard from thousands of people, we enter into a realm of joy, light, peace, and love in which we discover that the process of knowledge does not stop when we die. Instead, the process of learning and development goes on for eternity.
Raymond Moody
Language may die at the hands of the schoolman: it is regenerated by the poets.
Emmanuel Mounier
It is only possible to speak in the language and in the spirit of one's time.
Eugene Delacroix
I had always regarded language as more a question of utility than identity. Therefore, I promptly noted that all the (EU) meetings should be conducted in English and French. My older colleagues laughed. Later I understood why. On the second day of the Finnish presidency (of the EU) a German delegation refused to participate in an informal ministerial meeting because no German interpretation had been arranged.
Alexander Stubb
Be ever gentle with the children God has given you; watch over them constantly; reprove them earnestly, but not in anger. In the forcible language of Scripture, "Be not bitter against them." "Yes, they are good boys," I once heard a kind father say. "I talk to them very much, but do not like to beat my, children--the world will beat them." It was a beautiful thought not elegantly expressed.
Elihu Burritt
You know we're constantly taking. We don't make most of the food we eat, we don't grow it, anyway. We wear clothes other people make, we speak a language other people developed, we use a mathematics other people evolved and spent their lives building. I mean we're constantly taking things. It's a wonderful ecstatic feeling to create something and put it into the pool of human experience and knowledge.
Steve Jobs
What you wear represents you to the world, especially now, when communication between people is so fast. Fashion is a universal language that everyone understands.
Miuccia Prada
This unique strategy that the advanced primates created, the strategy of using language to bind time, is what the process we call 'civilization' has been all about.
Terence McKenna
