2,489 Quotes About Language

We are one at the root - we just part at the branch

Maybe that was why the French called orgasms “las petites morts”: because the things that bring us passion tend to slip past our defenses, to creep insidiously into every facet of our consciousnesses and kill us as ruthlessly, and efficiently, as any drug.

Hello" and "good-bye" were a pair of bookends, propping up a vast library of blank volumes, void almanacs, novels full of sentiment I couldn't apprehend

Words never fail. We hear them, we read them; they enter into the mind and become part of us for as long as we shall live. Who speaks reason to his fellowmen bestows it upon them. Who mouths inanity disorders thought for all who listen. There must be some minimum allowable dose of inanity beyond which the mind cannot remain reasonable. Irrationality, like buried chemical waste, sooner or later must seep into all the tissues of thought.

We may find that the words we are naturally drawn toward when we speak to others or ourselves have a great deal to say about our ability to be present with one another.

GoogleEarthlike soars his mind, through clouds where snowstorms brew; New York State has dropped away, and Massachusetts flew, and Newfoundland is ice-entombed and Rockall gull-beshatten, where no eye sees the lightning flash its momentary pattern …

How we speak about the awakening of these memories may influence the ferocity with which they arrive ... One therapist says this: 'even the gentlest sensory breeze can touch and awaken these old memories in our bodies. We are so tender and so available for healing.

Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' was possibly too rude. 'It's in the book,' I said. He didn't hit me.

I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.