Language Quotes

A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

Max Weinreich

Perhaps of all the creations of man, language is the most astonishing.

Gyles Lytton Sitrachy

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

William Shakespeare

We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.

Joseph Roux

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.

Lily Tomlin

Life is a foreign language all men mispronounce it.

Christopher Morley

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

George Orwell

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.

Jeremy Taylo

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

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

Doug Larson

Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken.

Egyptian Inscription Recorded at the Time of the Invention of Writing

We can lie in the language of dress or try ot tell the truth; but unless we are naked and bald, it is impossible to be silent.

Alison Lurie

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

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

Eric Hoffe

Grammar and logic free language from being at the mercy of the tone of voice. Grammar protects us against misunderstanding the sound of an uttered name; logic protects us against what we say have double meaning.

Rosenstock - Huessy

The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language.

J. Michael Straczynski

Real programmers can write assembly code in any language.

Larry Wall

By listening to his language of his locality the poet begins to learn his craft. It is his function to lift, by use of imagination and the language he hears, the material conditions and appearances of his environment to the sphere of the intelligence where they will have new currency.

William Carlos Williams

If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.

Doug Larson