Language Quotes
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.Benjamin Lee Whorf
A filthy mouth will not utter decent language.Chinese Prove
Only a novel... in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the other considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me the quite a nice compliment - - But if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment. A Tramp Abroad, 1880.Mark Twain
Language study is a route to maturity. Indeed, in language study as in life, if a person is the same today as he was yesterday, it would be an act of mercy to pronounce him dead and to place him in a coffin, rather than in a classroom.John A. Rassias
Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language.Henry James
In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language.Mark Twain
The structure of language determines not only thought, but reality itself.Noam Chomsky, Ruth Anshen, Biography of an Idea (Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell Limited, 1986), pg. 196
A different language is a different vision of life.Federico Fellini
Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body.Martha Graham
We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.Henry David Thoreau
Do Not Disturb signs should be written in the language of the hotel maids.Tim Bedore
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.Nelson Mandela
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.Doug Larson
For the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies.Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.Unknown
Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.Jeremy Taylo
He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle to steady his fellow countrymen and hearten those Europeans upon whom the long dark night of tyranny had descended.Edward R. Murrow, On Winston Churchill, 1954
Me, we. Supposedly the shortest quote in the English language delivered at a Harvard graduation.Muhammad Ali
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.Mark Twain
Duty then is the sublimest word in the English language. You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more, you should never wish to do less.General Robert E. Lee
The angels are so enamoured of the language that is spoken in heaven, that they will not distort their lips with the hissing and unmusical dialects of men, but speak their own, whether there be any who understand it or not.Ralph Waldo Emerson
High thoughts must have high language.Aristophanes, Frogs, 405 B. C.
Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing.John Erskine
Thought is the blossom language the bud action the fruit behind it.Ralph Waldo Emerson
The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language.J. Michael Straczynski
The human language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out a tune for a dancing bear, when we hope with our music to move the stars.Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
BASIC - A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.Anon.
Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico - Philosophicus (1922)
There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.William Osle
Metric is definitely communist. One monetary system, one language, one weight and measurement system, one world - All communist! We know the West was won by the inch, foot, yard, and mile.Dean Krakel, Director of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame
Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground.Noah Webste
Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.George Orwell
Music is the soul of language.Max Heindel
The purpose of most computer languages is to lengthen your resume by a word and a comma.Larry Wall
Language is the soul of intellect, and reading is the essential process by which that intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life.Charles Scribner, Jr.
