Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one’s mother’s womb.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
The common people do not accurately adapt their thoughts to objects; nor, secondly, do they accurately adapt their words to their thoughts; they do not mean to lie; but, taking no pains to be exact, they give you very false accounts. A great part of their language is proverbial; if anything rocks at all, they say it rocks like a cradle; and in this way they go on.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the field, but not to describe human character.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Language is the pedigree of nations.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
The language denotes the man; a coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
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
A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is ignorant of his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
One can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot be hostile to man.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
Language exerts hidden power, like the moon on the tides.
—Rita Mae Brown (b.1944) American Writer, Feminist
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
Language is the light of the mind.
—John Stuart Mill (1806–73) English Philosopher, Economist
The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American Novelist
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
Love has its own language, but marriage falls back on the local dialect.
—Russian Proverb
The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don’t speak, it’s because everything’s perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.
—Humphry Davy (1778–1829) British Chemist, Science Propagandist
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
—Martha Graham (1894–1991) American Choreographer
All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, 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
Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
Spanish is the language of lovers, Italian is for the singer, French for diplomats, and German for horses.
—Spanish Proverb
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
I have discovered that in every language and every country I have visited, there are no new stories. They’re all recycled. The same stressful thoughts arise in each mind one way or another, sooner or later.
—Byron Katie (b.1942) American Speaker, Author
One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Writer, Aviator
Mastery of language affords remarkable power.
—Frantz Fanon (1925–61) French-Martinique Psychoanalyst, Philosopher
The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
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