Quotes on Language

Do you know of any more overwhelming and humbling expression for God's condescension and extravagance towards us human beings than that He places Himself, so to say, on the same level of choice with the world, just so that we may be able to choose; that God, if language dare speak thus, woos humankind - that He, the eternally strong one, woos sapless humanity? Yet, how insignificant is the young lover's choice between her pursuers by comparison with this choice between God and the world.

If I am selling to you, I speak your language. If I am buying, dann müssen sie Deutsch sprechen.

If Language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant. If what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done, remains undone.

No important national language, at least in the Occidental world, has complete regularity of grammatical structure, nor is there a single logical category which is adequately and consistently handled in terms of linguistic symbolism.

I read the Bible to myself; I'll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.

There is another language beyond language, _x000D_ another place beyond heaven and hell. _x000D_ Precious gems come from another mine, _x000D_ the heart draws light from another source.

A new language requires a new technique. If what you're saying doesn't require a new language, then what you're saying probably isn't new.

The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax

No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge.

Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.

Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God - if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That's what I think.

Earth is a place where language has literally become alive. Language has infested matter; it is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us.

There is no reason to believe ... that the "essential purpose" of language is "communication". Language can be used to transmit information, but it also serves many other purposes: to establish relations among people, to express or clarify thought, for play, for creative mental activity, to gain understanding, and so on. In my opinion, there is no reason to accord privileged status to one or the other of these modes.

Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me.

The goal of mankind is knowledge ... Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man 'knows', should, in strict psychological language, be what he 'discovers' or 'unveils'; what man 'learns' is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

Women want to talk first, connect first, then have sex. For men, sex is the connection. Sex is man's language of intimacy

No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality.

Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.