2,489 Quotes About Language

I was pretty good at picking up new languages when I was little, but it's not like I had superpowers or anything.Kids just have an easier time with words.

In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single homogeneous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.

Language is the dress of thought.

Anything that keeps old words in circulation is to be treasured, the French revolution be damned.

The first prerequisite for fine literature is that the writer must see the language not as a transparent medium for self-expression or the representation of reality, but as a medium one must struggle with to make it do one's bidding.

Original thought creates new language, and current language impacts new thought.

I stress the expansion and elaboration of language. In simplifying it, reducing it, we reduce the power of our expression and our power to communicate. Standardization, the use of worn-out formulas, impedes communication because it does not match the subtlety of our minds or emotions, the multimedia of our unconscious life.