Language Quotes
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In short, every adventure of the mind is an adventure vehicled by words. Every adventure of the mind is an adventure with words; every such adventure is an adventure among words; and occasionally an adventure is an adventure of words. It is no exaggeration to say that, in every word of every language — every single word or phrase of every language, however primitive or rudimentary or fragmentarily recorded, and whether living or dead- we discover an enlightening, sometimes a rather frightening, vignette of history; with such a term as water we find that we require a volume rather than a vignette. Sometimes the history concerned may seem to affect only an individual. But, as John Donne remarked in 1624, ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;… any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ History is not merely individual, it is collective or social; not only national, but international; not simply terrestrial, but universal. History being recorded in words and achieved partly, sometimes predominantly, by words, it follows that he who despises or belittles or does no worse than underestimate, the value and power, the ineluctable necessity of words, despises all history and therefore despises mankind (himself perhaps excluded). He who ignores the enduring power and the history of words ignores that sole part of himself which can, after his death, influence the world outside himself, the sole part that merits a posterity.
Eric Partridge
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What makes international cinema so interesting is that each territory has its own sensibility. When you look at an Indian or French film, there's a certain flavor. And even though the language is different, if the film is successful, it has something very common and understandable.
Wong Kar-wai
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The benefits of science are not only material ones. The truths that science teaches are of common interest the world over. The language of science is universal, and is a powerful force in bringing the peoples of the world closer together.
Arthur Holly Compton
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Who is Mike Judge? Let me think. The only way I could possibly answer that question would be in a nonverbal fashion. I think I could do an interpretive dance that would answer that question for you.
Mike Judge
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Since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man.
Claude Levi-Strauss
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And I have a dream of a New American Language, one with a little bit more Spanish. I have a dream of a new pop music, that tells the truth with a good beat and some nice harmonies.
Dan Bern
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She’d been in America almost three years now, but she still wasn’t used to it, the same language sure, but they had different words for everything; she’d learned that a scone was a biscuit, that sidewalk meant a pavement, and that autumn was fall.
Colin Falconer
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It was an identity crisis. I was born and raised in France, but I never really felt French, so I needed to find something that I was more connected to. I used to go back to Tunisia every summer, but I was more into the language, my Arabic roots.
eL Seed
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Environment-based education produces student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math; improves standardized test scores and grade-point averages; and develops skills in problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making.
Richard Louv
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I don't write poems with a purpose in mind, but I'd hope that some readers would find their experiences mirrored or articulated here - and that the language would feel alive to them. Alive, in a way that is meaningful and pleasurable.
Deborah Landau
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The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.
Eugene Wigner
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If writing is language and language is desire and longing and suffering . . . then why when we write, when we make shapes on paper, why then does it so often look like the traditional, straight models, why does our longing look for example like John Updike's longing?
Carole Maso
