2,489 Quotes About Language

I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

Earlier 18th-century literary language was not supple enough to connect the life of the imagination to that of the street.

You'd be surprised how good writing matters when you're going after money.

Magic is the first language of the world. It was the language before words, before mathematics. Humanity can accept concepts like space travel to other galaxies, and yet magic can only be real in the minds of those who believe it, or in the imagination of children.

Language itself is so value-laden as to render value-neutrality almost impossible. Growing up in England I was introduced to the American Revolution by a 'footnote' to colonial history about the 'revolt' of the American colonies. Word choice and the organization of material gave the game away.

In the earliest English, the word bully was created by borrowing boel from the Dutch language. It means lover or sweetheart. Today, it is used to talk about someone who gets off by intimidating others because making others feel inferior is the only way for them to feel better about themselves maybe. Oh, how the words have fallen – literally fallen from grace!

I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.