The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything—gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness—rediscovers itself at precisely the point where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations. To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theatre.
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French Actor, Drama Theorist
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms
—Penelope Lively (b.1933) English Novelist, Children’s Author
Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things they denote.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Language… has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965) American Lutheran Theologian, Philosopher
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
Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.
—Humphry Davy (1778–1829) British Chemist, Inventor
Language is the amber in which a thousand precious thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning-flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing as the lightning. Words convey the mental treasures of one period to the generations that follow; and laden with this, their precious freight, they sail safely across gulfs of time in which empires have suffered shipwreck, and the languages of common life have sunk into oblivion.
—Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–86) Irish Prelate, Philologist, Poet
A mind enclosed in language is in prison.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
Those who know nothing of foreign languages, know nothing of their own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
The English language is nobody’s special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.
—Derek Walcott (1930–2017) West Indian Poet, Dramatist
Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.
—Roland Barthes (1915–80) French Writer, Critic, Teacher
Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English 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
How many languages are there in the world? How about 5 billion! Each of us talks, listens, and thinks in his/her own special language that has been shaped by our culture, experiences, profession, personality, mores and attitudes. The chances of us meeting someone else who talks the exact same language is pretty remote.
—Unknown
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
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
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
Language is the light of the mind.
—John Stuart Mill (1806–73) English Philosopher, Economist
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
Where nature’s end of language is declined,And men talk only to conceal the mind
—Edward Young (1683–1765) English Poet
Even if people are suspicious of the motives I think that learning and speaking two languages can only be a good thing for people.
—Stephen Harper
There is no tracing the connection of ancient nations but by language; therefore I am always sorry when any language is lost, for languages are the pedigree of nations.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.
—George Steiner (1929–2020) American Critic, Scholar
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
French is the language that turns dirt into romance.
—Stephen King (b.1947) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Screenwriter, Columnist, Film Director
Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is.
—Jose Saramago (1922–2010) Portuguese Novelist