Quotes about Language

I don't know why these things have to be transmitted by word of mouth, he thought. It wasn't exactly that they were secrets; God revealed his secrets easily to all his creatures. He had only one explanation for this fact: things have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words. Because people become fascinated with pictures and words, and wind up forgetting the Language of the World.

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

Avant-garde is French for bullshit

There is not only an art, but an eloquence in it.

The proper use of commas is often more art than science.

If you can say a thing with one stroke, unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a marchande de plaisir; a decorative litt

Babies who have not yet been taught to speak any language are the only race of the earth, the race of man: all the rest is pretence, what we call civilization, hatred, fear, desire for strength.

How can you talk if you don't say anything? I said. You talk without words. We are always talking without words. Well, what good are words, then? Not very good, most of the time. Most of the time they're only good to keep back what you really want to say, or something you don't want known.

Framing your solution negatively, such as "Don't shout at me," tends to focus the other's attention even more on the unwanted behavior and may unconsciously reinforce it, particularly if you are shouting back at them. It is more effective to say, quietly, "Please talk to me in a quiet tone." Focus the other's mind clearly on the positive action you want them to take.

The parallel, rather, is with human language. It is human to have the ability to speak, an essential part of the image of God in us. Nonetheless, concrete language, which exists in countless forms, is not native but acquired; it is learned.

Can it be, that the Greek grammarians invented their dual number for the particular benefit of twins?