quotations about language
Pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.
MURIEL BARBERY
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog
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Language is a living original; it is not made but grows. The growth of language repeats the growth of the plant; at first it is only root, next it puts forth a stem, then leaves, and finally blossoms.
WILLIAM SWINTON
Rambles Among Words: Their Poetry, History and Wisdom
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Language is not a wonderful natural asset; it is an artificial device that constantly misleads us and does us great harm; and the modern way of studying language is itself harmful because it enhances the reputation of language and sustains corrupt ways of thought.
AMOREY GETHIN
introduction, Language and Thought: A Rational Enquiry Into Their Nature and Relationship
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To clothe low-creeping matter with high-flown language is not fine fancy but flat foolery; it rather loads than raises a wren, to fasten the feathers of an ostrich to her wings.
THOMAS FULLER
The Holy State and the Profane State
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Language, which is the uniting bond and very medium of communion between men, is at the same time by the great variety of tongues, the means of severing and estranging nations more than anything else.
HORACE SMITH
The Tin Trumpet: Or, Heads and Tails, for the Wise and Waggish
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Every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another.
JOHN DRYDEN
Works of John Dryden
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Speech is a rolling press that always amplifies one's emotions.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
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Languages are the key or entry to the sciences and nothing more; contempt for the one redounds on the other. The question is not whether the languages be ancient of modern, dead or living; but whether they be rude or polished, whether the books found in them show a good or a bad taste.
BRUYERE
attributed, Day's Collacon
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Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time.
HAROLD PINTER
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 2005
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Language evolves and moves on. It is an organic thing. It is not stuck in an ivory tower, hung with expensive works of art.
E. L. JAMES
Fifty Shades of Grey
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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
DOUG LARSON
attributed, If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People?
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The world is not real for me until it has been pushed through the mesh of language.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Paris Review, spring 2009
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There's no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
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None of us can ever express the exact measure of our needs, or our ideas, or our sorrows, and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when we long to inspire pity in the stars.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
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It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words
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In the last century researchers and pedagogues viewed children learning a second language as an impediment to learning. The resultant pedagogical philosophy delayed the introduction of "foreign" languages to the high school years, just in time for the real impediment to focused learning -- adolescence.
JAY KUTEN
"Language is food for the brain", Wanganui Chronicle, March 16, 2016
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In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
MARK TWAIN
Innocents Abroad
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Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.
GENE WOLFE
"The Death of Doctor Island", Universe 3
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A man reacheth not to excellence with one language.
R. ASCHAM
attributed, Day's Collacon
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Men are apt to overvalue the tongues, and to think they have made considerable progress in learning when they have once overcome these; yet in reality there is no internal worth in them, and men may understand a thousand languages without being the wiser.
E. D. BAKER
attributed, Day's Collacon
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