2,489 Quotes About Language

You cannot legislate language. Prohibition never worked, right? Not for booze and not for sex and not for words.

Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence—‘This account of you we have from all quarters received.’ A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs.

Cine mută vorbele dintr-o limbă într-alta își lasă sufletul pe mâna diavolului (...) Că până tu te gândești și la o vorbă, și la cealaltă, duhul tău stă, nehotărât, pe deasupra vorbelor, mut și neterminat, și nu știe de-i albă ori neagră. Iar cine știe o limbă cu sufletul n-o poate ști pe ailaltă decât cu mintea.

[...] mi sembra che il linguaggio venga sempre usato in modo approssimativo, casuale, sbadato, e ne provo un fastidio intollerabile.

ahthOOn SSyng!" I said. "That's farewell.""It sounds evil.""It is," I answered, and we parted.

Kindness is a language more often misunderstood than taken at face value.

The alternative is to locate large deposits of specifically what we need, and extract it in bulk from the earth.”“That’s mining,” said the Drip. “There is a twenty-third century legend that youth was conscripted to work in mines. Anyhow, all young people were known as miners at one period.

Nobody knows everything—one of the pleasures of language is that there is always something new to learn—and everybody makes mistakes.

Poetry is the art of using language to transcend language.