quotations about language
The world is not real for me until it has been pushed through the mesh of language.
JOHN BANVILLE
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The Paris Review, spring 2009
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Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.
MARK HOPKINS
address at dedication of Williston Seminary, Dec. 1, 1841
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In language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned.
RICHARD DUPPA
Maxims
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Wouldn't it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the nuisance of communicating in a different language?... Within a decade or so, we'll be able to communicate with one another via small earpieces with built-in microphones. No more trying to remember your high school French when checking into a hotel in Paris. Your earpiece will automatically translate "Good evening, I have a reservation" to Bon soir, j'ai une réservation -- while immediately translating the receptionist's unintelligible babble to "I am sorry, Sir, but your credit card has been declined."
DAVID ARBESÚ
"Could the language barrier actually fall within the next 10 years?", The Conversation, March 28, 2016
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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
A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
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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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Language is originally and essentially nothing but a system of signs or symbols, which denote real occurrences, or their echo in the human soul.
CARL JUNG
Psychology of the Unconscious
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A country without a language is a country without a soul.
ELIZABETH GREIWE
"The luck of the Irish language student", Chicago Tribune, March 16, 2016
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Language is the dress of thought.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
Lives of the English Poets
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It is as though the ancestors who made language and knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of interfering with its purpose! For when language is seriously interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth, be it from mere incompetence or worse, from malice, horrors can descend again on mankind.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
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In general the languages of most unpolished people have a great force and energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner.
EDMUND BURKE
Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
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I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.
KATHERINE DUNN
attributed, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series
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Since individuals think in the language in which they speak, thought processes are limited to words and concepts within that language. If a word for a concept doesn't exist in that language, it cannot be thought. Because language is the cornerstone of thinking and culture, as the languages around the world die out, ways of thinking become restricted.
JORDAN RYDER
"Native American Student Association to Stage Screening of Language Loss Documentary", Daily Iowan, March 29, 2016
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A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
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Elegant language may make darkness appear like light.
AL-IRAKI
attributed, Day's Collacon
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The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
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I like you; your eyes are full of language.
ANNE SEXTON
letter to Anne Clarke, Jul. 3, 1964
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If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
GEORGE ORWELL
1984
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Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.
NELSON MANDELA
Long Walk to Freedom
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Language is a window to the world.
SUSANNA ZARAYSKY
Language Is Music: Over 100 Fun & Easy Tips to Learn Foreign Languages
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