LANGUAGE QUOTES IV

quotations about language

Language quote

Language is easy for us to learn and use because language, like a living organism, has evolved in a symbiotic relationship with humans. Language has adapted to what our brains can do, rather than the other way around.

LINDA B. GLASER

"New book reintegrates the science of language", Cornell Chronicle, April 4, 2016


Language comes into being, like consciousness, from the basic need, from the scantiest intercourse with other human.

KARL MARX

The German Ideology

Tags: Karl Marx


Perhaps the sad and empty language that today's flabby humanity pours forth, will, in all its horror, in all its boundless absurdity, re-echo in the heart of a solitary man who is awake, and then perhaps that man, suddenly realizing that he does not understand, will begin to understand.

ARTHUR ADAMOV

The Confession

Tags: Arthur Adamov


We live at the level of our language. Whatever we can articulate we can imagine or understand or explore.

ELLEN GILCHRIST

Falling Through Space

Tags: Ellen Gilchrist


All true language is incomprehensible, Like the chatter of a beggar's teeth.

ANTONIN ARTAUD

Ci-Git

Tags: Antonin Artaud


The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

Essays

Tags: Oliver Goldsmith


Language is a virus from outer space.

WILLIAM DUCKWORTH

Twenty/Twenty


Speech is the best show a man puts on.

BENJAMIN LEE WHORF

Language, Thought and Reality


Language is the sole instrument through which all life's activities are performed. Language is therefore not merely a picture of reality per se but also a willing instrument of the language-user to map the reality.

R. C. PRADHAN

Language, Reality, and Transcendence: An Essay on the Main Strands of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy


A language which we do not know is a fortress sealed.

MARCEL PROUST

Within a Budding Grove

Tags: Marcel Proust


The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Tags: Christian Nestell Bovee


An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.

MARTIN BUBER

I and Thou

Tags: Martin Buber


Language is an art, and a glorious one, whose influence extends over all others, and in which all science whatever must center; but an art springing from necessity, and originally invented by artless men.

J. H. TOOKE

attributed, Day's Collacon


Pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

MURIEL BARBERY

The Elegance of the Hedgehog


If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

DOUG LARSON

attributed, If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?

Tags: Doug Larson


The human need for language is not simply for the transmission of meaning, it is at the same time listening to and affirming a person's existence.

GAO XINGJIAN

"An Interview with Gao Xingjian", BookBrowse

Tags: Gao Xingjian


Language is a living original; it is not made but grows. The growth of language repeats the growth of the plant; at first it is only root, next it puts forth a stem, then leaves, and finally blossoms.

WILLIAM SWINTON

Rambles Among Words: Their Poetry, History and Wisdom


Language is an impure medium. Speech is public property and words are the soiled products, not of nature, but of society, which circulates and uses them for a thousand different ends.

EDWARD HIRSCH

How to Read a Poem

Tags: Edward Hirsch


A language has very little that is arbitrary in it, very little betokening the conscious power and action of man. It owes its origin, not to the thoughts and the will of individuals, but to an instinct actuating a whole people: it expresses what is common to them all: it has sprung out of their universal wants, and lives in their hearts. But after a while in intellectual aristocracy come forward, and frame a new language of their own. The princes and lords of thought shoot forth their winged words into regions beyond the scan of the people. They require a gold coinage, in addition to the common currency.

JULIUS CHARLES HARE

Guesses at Truth

Tags: Julius Charles Hare


Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.

STEPHEN FRY

A Bit of Fry and Laurie