Best 3547 quotes in «language quotes» category

I can do everything with my language but not with my body. What I hide by my language, my body utters. I can deliberately mold my message, not my voice. By my voice, whatever it says, the other will recognize "that something is wrong with me". I am a liar (by preterition), not an actor. My body is a stubborn child, my language is a very civilized adult...

I can feel the power of the words doing the work. Must trust language more.

I can remember the lush spring excitement of language in childhood. Sitting in church, rolling it around my mouth like marbles -- tabernacle and pharisee and parable, trespasses and Babylon and covenant.... I collected the names of stars and of plants: Arcturus and Orion and Betelgeuse, melilot and fumitory and toadflax. There was no end to it, apparently -- it was like the grains of sand on the shore, the leaves on the great ash outside my bedroom window, immeasurable and unconquerable.

I can relate to Marguerite Duras even though I'm not French, nor have I been consumed by love for an East Asian man. I can life inside Alice Munro's skin. But I can't relate to my own mother. My body is full of sentences and moments, my heart resplendent with lovely turns of phrases, but neither is able to be touched by another.

I can’t translate myself into language any more.

I caught one last glimpse of her face, howling something at me. There were too many vowels in what she said, and they were in an unkind order. ("Substitutions")

I could displace the mystery of my speech onto writing, the latter perhaps recharging the former

I control the world so long as I can name it. Which is why children must chase language before they do anything else, tame the wilderness by describing it, challenge God by learning His hundred names.

Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology… we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.

I did not foresee my words becoming such a reverie of mimic and refrain.

I'd like to look below my eyes and see not language staring back at me, not sentences or single words or awkward pen lines, but a surface clear and burnished as glass.

I do not mean, of course, that we can always accurately express our conscious thoughts with Proustian accuracy. Consciousness overflows language: we perceive vastly more than we can describe.

I don't know anything in the beginning, which makes it great fun to write, you know? You don't know anything. You don't even know how to write. So you begin every book as an amateur and as a dummy. And in the writing, you discover the book. Of course, you're in charge. But gradually by writing sentence after sentence, the book, as it were, reveals itself through you to your language - through your language, rather. So each sentence is a revelation. I'm not exaggerating. Each and every sentence is a revelation. And what you're trying to do is hook one sentence to the sentence before and the next one to that sentence. And as you do, you're building a house, you know? [But] the architect and the contractor, they know what the house will look like when it's done. And that's the big difference. I don't have any idea what it will look like when it's done.

I don’t think I have as many friends as I thought I did, not close ones, not many who I connect with on that deep level of language that doesn’t just allow us to be ourselves with each other but allows us to be understood, even when we’re not saying anything. Silence—awkward or comfortable—is a language too. Awkward silence screams, “We have nothing in common.” Comfortable silence proves just how much we do.

I dreamed I dwelt in marble halls, And woke to find it true; I wasn't born for an age like this; Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?

I dug her usage of "Spotify" as a verb.

If Bengali is my mother, then English is my father and friend.

If, as Proust suggests, we are obliged to create our own language, it is because there are dimensions to ourselves absent from clichés, which require us to flout etiquette in order to convey with greater accuracy the distinctive timbre of our thought.

If commas are open to interpretation, hyphens are downright Delphic.

If I have a creed, this is it: My god is language, written and read. And there is no other god but this.

I fell in love the moment I saw her in her grandfather's kitchen, her dark curls crashing over her Portuguese shoulders. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she smiled. 'I'm really not that thirsty.' 'What? What you say?' Her English wasn't too good. Now I'm seventy-three and she's just turned seventy. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she asked me today, smiling. 'I'm really not that thirsty.' 'What? What you say?' Neither of us has the gift of language acquisition. After fifty years of marriage we have never really spoken, but we love each other more than words can say.

If I am honest I will admit that I have always wanted to avoid love. Yes give me romance, give me sex, give me fights, give me all the parts of love but not the simple single word which is so complex and demands the best of me this hour this minute this forever.

If I build own language... will be better because I always will end up making new words.

If I had to create a god, I would lend him a “slow understanding”: a kind of drip-by-drip understanding of problems. People who understand quickly frighten me.

If Jupiter was in the ascendant when you were born, you are of a jovial disposition; and if you're not jovial but miserable and saturnine that's a disaster, because a disaster is a dis-astro, or misplaced planet. Disaster is Latin for ill-starred. The fault, as Shakespeare put it, is not in our stars; but the language is.

If meaning lies even partially in usage, then you subtly alter the language every time you use it. You couldn't leave it intact if you tried.

If kind words were said without meaning, simply to make us pleased with the speaker, the result was surely accomplished, and we felt more kindly disposed toward the whole of Guatemala for the pleasant words spoken in that musical language.

If old truths are to retain their hold on men’s minds, they must be restated in the language and concepts of successive generations. What at one time are their most effective expressions gradually become so worn with use that they cease to carry a definite meaning. The underlying ideas may be as valid as ever, but the words, even when they refer to problems that are still with us, no longer convey the same conviction; the arguments do not move in a context familiar to us; and they rarely give us direct answers to the questions we are asking This may be inevitable because no statement of an ideal that is likely to sway men’s minds can be complete: it must be adapted to a given climate of opinion, presuppose much that is accepted by all men of the time, and illustrate general principles in terms of issues with which they are concerned.

If one believes that words are acts, as I do, then one must hold writers responsible for what their words do.

I found that reading gave me a certain relief – one form of escapism that seemed safe, and maybe more than safe. I felt saner – less fragmented- after reading for an hour. location 3234

I formed several possible stories out of her speech, formed them at once, so it was less like I failed to understand than that I understood in chords, understood in a plurality of worlds.

If one is talking about a vile thing it is better to talk of it in coarse language; one is less likely to be seduced into excusing it.

If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language.

If someone said 'diametrically,' could 'opposed' be far behind?

If the components of the body were organs and veins and cells, then the components of thought and language were words and grammar.

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found the time to conquer the world.

If there's any interaction between genes and languages, it is often languages that influence genes, since linguistic differences between populations lessen the chance of genetic exchange between them.

If this constant sliding and hiding of meaning were true of conscious life, then we would of course never be able to speak coherently at all. If the whole of language were present to me when I spoke, then I would not be able to articulate anything at all. The ego, or consciousness, can therefore only work by repressing this turbulent activity, provisionally nailing down words on to meanings. Every now and then a word from the unconscious which I do not want insinuates itself into my discourse, and this is the famous Freudian slip of the tongue or parapraxis. But for Lacan all our discourse is in a sense a slip of the tongue: if the process of language is as slippery and ambiguous as he suggests, we can never mean precisely what we say and never say precisely what we mean. Meaning is always in some sense an approximation, a near-miss, a part-failure, mixing non-sense and non-communication into sense and dialogue.

If untruths become part of our language—untruths that in context are intended to be interpreted as polite expressions or figure of speech—then each person is left to decide for themselves the meaning of any sentence. And when language and meaning become subjective, society breaks down. The rule of law becomes a grey area. Commands become suggestions. And how do you keep anyone, including yourself, accountable for actions based on ambiguous language?

If two thousand five hundred languages are to be lost in the course of the twenty-first century, don’t be in any doubt about what that means for us: in each of those two thousand five hundreds cases a culture will be lost.

If we make Sanskrit as mandatory course until 12th, 5000 years old knowledge & wisdom will not deplete due to language barrier. From software to hardware to keyboard to vocational training should be available in Sanskrit & Hindi. We are gross neglecting oldest language & civilization.

If we should be worrying about anything to do with the future of English, it should not be that the various strands will drift apart but that they will grow indistinguishable. And what a sad, sad loss that would be.

...if we were to associate the genius of a place with one particular thing – the Russians with literature, say, or the Germans with music, the Dutch and Spanish with painting – we would have to say that the true genius of Ancient India was language.

If we were not impressed by job titles, suits, and jargon, we would demand that financial advisors show us their personal bank statements before they tell us what we could or should do with our own money.

If words allow themselves to be handled, it is with the help of infinite carefulness. One has to welcome them, listen to the, before asking any service of them. Words are living things closely involved with human life.

If you load oppositional words with negative connotations, then critical thought is stifled. If you load supportive words with positive connotations, then people can’t avoid thinking in the prescribed way.

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.

If you'd combat bigotry, use honest language and call things out for what they really are.

If you look a word up in the dictionary and twenty minutes later you're still wandering around in the dictionary, you probably have the most basic equipment you need to be a poet.

If you look at the historical record, you will find that language has always been in decline. Which means, really, and it never has.