Quotes about Language

Don't you know how, in talking a foreign language, even fluently, one says half the time not what one wants to but what one can?

The language of shame is extreme. Hear it enough and you believe it. You are told you are disgusting and unclean, and eventually you believe you are.

Now listen more carefully to depression. Like all feelings, it is a kind of language. Guilt says, "I am wrong." Anger says, "You are wrong." Fear says, "I am in danger." Depression, too, has a message, but the message is usually not that simple. "Whereas some emotions are clear and unambiguous, depression's language is more heavily encrypted. It might take some decoding before it is understandable, but it is worth the effort.

Perspicuity, therefore, requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctly and exclusively appropriate to them.

This word is composed of jus and dictio, juris dictio or a speaking and pronouncing of the law.

Poetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.

Metaphor is the only possible language available to religion because it alone is honest about Mystery.

I hope we can inaugurate a new humility in our use of religious language, which for me is the very proof that it is authentic.

The language of patriarchy is always a noble or macho language of patriotism and freedom. Men (and their female echoes) are always speaking it, but the amazing thing is that anyone is still willing to believe it. But fortunately the poor, the oppressed and marginalized, and especially women are beginning to trust their natural and truly religious instincts.

Science is now giving us a very helpful language for what religion rightly intuited and imaged, albeit in mythological language. Remember, myth does not mean "not true," which is the common misunderstanding; it actually refers to things that are always true!

All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe. That's the best human language can achieve. We can say, "It's like—it's similar to…," but we can never say, "It is…" because we are in the realm of beyond, of transcendence, of mystery.

Just because you do not have the right word for God does not mean you are not having the right experience.