2,489 Quotes About Language

Literary translation is not merely an act of picking words from one language and keeping it by dipping in the vessel of another language. Those words need to be rinsed, washed, carved and decorated as much as possible.

Illiteracy also means not being able to read or write the words of a language you neither speak nor understand. ~ Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Using a single word to describe two different things suggests a disregard for the world's real diversity which bears comparison with that shown by the cliché user.

In reading a recent novel, I myself was convicted by a comment the mother makes to her adult daughter: ‘My dear, you’ve missed so many opportunities to say nothing.’ We do miss these opportunities, as well as opportunities to say less and say it more judiciously. And so we miss particular delights of finding words and speaking them into silences big enough to allow them to be heard.

He's good at painting the world with his words. I don't understand all of them but I drink in enough to taste the flavours and swill them around in my mouth.

I wrote when I did not know life;now that I know life, I have no more to say.

She walks to a tableShe walk to table She is walking to a tableShe walk to table now What difference does it makeWhat difference it make In Nature, no completenessNo sentence really complete thought Language, like woman,Look best when free, undressed.

Love, whether you call it love, aşk, amor or anything else, feels as sweet.

Words are the best bargain. You get them for free and they never run out.