Language Quotes
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I was reading The Bible a lot through my 20s, mostly the Old Testament, just because I was knocked out by the language and the stories. I felt that the God being talked about there, who was this insane, vindictive patriarch - it was kind of thrilling, and titillated something in me at the time.
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All language is a popularity contest.
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We're all brothers and sisters. It doesn't matter what language you speak or what color your skin is.
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I dislike pastiche; it attracts attention to the language only.
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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?
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The book is famous for two things: It's an early reader for kids with its simple language. And the second thing is how the fantastic illustrations show dogs doing human things.
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Language is magic: it makes things appear and disappear.
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Understanding Scripture in a language other than the heart language in which we think and experience emotion is "like trying to eat soup with a fork. You can get a little taste, but you cannot get nourished.
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English should be our official language. Reading and speaking English are requirements to become a citizen.
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Numbers constitute the only universal language.
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On July 26, 1916, I announced to all my friends in America that from now on I resolved to write no more poems in the classical language, and to begin my experiments in writing poetry in the so-called vulgar tongue of the people.
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I think it's wrong to write in a totally esoteric language when you want to talk about things which interest a multitude of women.
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What is the fear inside language? No accident of the body can make it stop burning.
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I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society.
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It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. ... Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends.
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Language, thought, analysis, art, dance, poetry, mythmaking: these are the things that point the way toward the realm of the eschaton.
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When you act, you want to emote and think in that language. I don't enjoy the process of doing a film in a language I am not good with.
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For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. Travel robs us of such refuge. Far from our own people, our own language, stripped of all our props, deprived of our masks (one doesn't know the fare on the streetcars, or anything else), we are completely on the surface of ourselves.
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You hear sounds and orchestration, it's ... the fastest way, I think, to your emotions, even if you don't understand the language of the song.
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The First Amendment's language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.
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In truth, the best long-term explanations about our ancient counterparts can be found in the paintings, sculpture, crafts, tools of utility, language and architecture left behind. These are the building blocks of civilization we call culture. These are what we call 'the arts.
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Language is the currency of consciousness. We speak to fill the void. We write it down to remember.
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English is the language of a people ho have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.
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This sign I give you: every people speaks its tongue of good and evil, which the neighbor does not understand. It has invented its own language of customs and rights.
