A countryman is as warm in fustian as a king in velvet, and a truth is as comfortable in homely language as in fine speech. As to the way of dishing up the meat, hungry men leave that to the cook, only let the meat be sweet and substantial.
—Charles Spurgeon (1834–92) English Baptist Preacher
As advertising blather becomes the nation’s normal idiom, language becomes printed noise.
—George Will (b.1941) American Columnist, Journalist, Writer
If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin they would never have found time to conquer the world.
—Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German Poet, Writer
We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
—Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American Educationist
The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.
—Roland Barthes (1915–80) French Writer, Critic, Teacher
No literature is complete until the language it was written in is dead.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
Ours is a precarious language, as every writer knows, in which the merest shadow line often separates affirmation from negation, sense from nonsense, and one sex from the other.
—James Thurber
But no language is perfect, no vocabulary is adequate to the wealth of the given universe, no pattern of words and sentences, however rich, however subtle, can do justice to the interconnected Gestalts with which experience presents us. Consequently the phenomenal forms of our name-conditioned universe are by nature delusory and fallacious. Wisdom comes only to those who have learned how to talk and read and write without taking language more seriously than it deserves. As the only begotten of civilization and even of our humanity, language must be taken very seriously. Seriously, too, as an instrument (when used with due caution) for thinking about the relationships between phenomena. But it must never be taken seriously when it is used, as in the old creedal religions and their modern political counterparts, as being in any way the equivalents of immediate experience or as being a source of true knowledge about the nature of things.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
—Lily Tomlin (b.1939) American Comedy Actress
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
Language was given us that we might say pleasant things to each other.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English Novelist, Poet
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Love has its own language, but marriage falls back on the local dialect.
—Russian Proverb
After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?
—Russell Hoban (1925–2011) American Novelist, Children’s Writer
Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to leam a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
The downtrodden, who are the great creators of slang.
—Anthony Burgess (1917–93) English Novelist, Critic, Composer
It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.
—Franklin P. Jones
Where nature’s end of language is declined,And men talk only to conceal the mind
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly nonsensical furor.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
Language is the archives of history.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that the colors of an autumn forest….Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them , in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Language is the pedigree of nations.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Mastery of language affords remarkable power.
—Frantz Fanon (1925–61) French-Martinique Psychoanalyst, Philosopher
The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.
—Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American Biographer, Novelist, Socialist
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, know nothing of their own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness, for speech is itself a critique of life: it names, it characterizes, it passes judgment, in that it creates.
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German Novelist, Short Story Writer, Social Critic, Philanthropist, Essayist
Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
Poetry is the language of feeling.
—William Winter
It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Sweedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
In the intercourse of the world people should not take words as so much genuine coin of standard metal, but merely as counters that people play with.
—Douglas William Jerrold (1803–57) English Writer, Dramatist, Wit
A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is ignorant of his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Language is the Rubicon that divides man from beast.
—Max Muller (1823–1900) German-Born British Philologist, Orientalist
Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade before the public. Never clothe them in vulgar or shoddy attire.
—George W. Crane (1901–95) American Psychologist, Physician
If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Language is the source of misunderstandings.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900–44) French Novelist, Aviator
There is no such thing as the Queen’s English. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
You can’t write about people out of textbooks, and you can’t use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American Short-Story Writer, Novelist
And who in time knows whither we may vent the treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores this gain of our best glories shall be sent, ‘t unknowing Nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident may come refined with the accents that are ours?
—Samuel Daniel (1562–1619) English Poet, Historian