Quotes on Language

To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing-- what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that.

Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.

The word in language is half someone else’s… it exists in other people’s mouths, in other people’s contexts, serving other people’s intentions: it is from there that one must take the word, and make it one’s own.

Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects?

In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single, homogenous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language.

There is a word, in a verb, something sacred which forbids us from using it recklessly. To handle a language cunningly is to practice a kind of evocative sorcery.

Force is the only language the imperialists can hear, and no country became free without some sort of violence.

In all the languages in the world, there is the same proverb: "What the eyes don't see, the heart doesn't grieve over." Well, I say that there isn't an ounce of truth in it. The further off they are, the closer to the heart are all those feelings that we try to repress and forget.

The warrior knows that the most important words in all languages are the small words. Yes. Love. God. They are words that are easy enough to say and which fill vast empty spaces.

Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.

Death stands above me, whispering low I know not what into my ear; Of his strange language all I know Is, there is not a word of fear.

A written discourse on any subject is bound to contain much that is fanciful.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

There were times, especially when I was traveling for 'Eat, Pray, Love,' when, I swear to God, I would feel this weight of my female ancestors, all those Swedish farmwives from beyond the grave who were like, 'Go! Go to Naples! Eat more pizza! Go to India, ride an elephant! Do it! Swim in the Indian Ocean. Read those books. Learn a language.'

Attitude is the most important word in any language. Your attitude controls every aspect of your life. Attitude should definitely be taught in all schools and every business course... Remember you don't have to be sick to get better. Your attitude can always be improved.

I die for speaking the language of the angels.

The fact that man produces a concept "I" besides the totality of his mental and emotional experiences or perceptions does not prove that there must be any specific existence behind such a concept. We are succumbing to illusions produced by our self-created language, without reaching a better understanding of anything. Most of so-called philosophy is due to this kind of fallacy.

Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights._x000D_ _x000D_ But your ears thirst for the sound of the heart's knowledge. _x000D_ _x000D_ You would know in words that which you have always known in thought. _x000D_ _x000D_ You would touch with your fingers the naked body of the dreams.

I do not know if there is a more dreadful word in the English language than that word "lost."

The language of the body is the key that can unlock the soul.