Quotes on Language

...In another time, What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted To say that language is error, and all things are wronged By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.

Above all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.

I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together.

Written language must be considered as a particular psychic reality. The book is permanent; it is an object in your field of vision. It speaks to you with a monotonous authority which even its author would not have. You are fairly obliged to read what is written.

It wasn't a deliberate decision to become a poet. It was something I found myself doing - and loving. Language became an addiction.

A riot is the language of the unheard. On blacks in America; address at Birmingham AL

My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc.

To speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

I spend my days kneeling in the muck of language, feeling around for gooey verbs, nouns, and modifiers that I can squash together to make a blob of a sentence that bears some likeness to reason and sense.

Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence. Its heartwood is calligraphy - the dance, on a tiny stage, of the living, speaking hand - and its roots reach into living soil, though its branches may be hung each year with new machines. So long as the root lives, typography remains a source of true delight, true knowledge, true surprise.

There's really no substitute for being able to sit across from someone, have eye contact, see and read their body language, hear the inflection in their voice in a real way.

So many Indian novels, quite unfairly, do not get the prominence they should because they have been written in a language other than English.

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.

We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.

Language failed me very often, but then, the substitute for me was silence, but not violence.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

Philosophy attempts, not to discover new truths about the world, but to gain a clear view of what we already know and believe about it. That depends upon attaining a more explicit grasp of the structure of our thoughts; and that in turn on discovering how to give a systematic account of the working of language, the medium in which we express our thoughts.

A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.

Believe in miracles but don't depend on them. When you hear kind word spoken about a friend, tell him so. Spoil your spouse, not your children. Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language. To help your children turn out well, spend twice as much time with them and half as much money.