Best 3547 quotes in «language quotes» category

Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.

Poetry is a language in which man explores his own amazement.

Poetry is all nouns and verbs.

Poetry is language trying to become bodily experience.

Poetry is a deliberate attempt to make language suggestive and imprecise.

Poetry is always in transformation. There are certain aspects of contemporary Italian poetry that are very preoccupied with politics and deconstruction and they don't deeply interest me. But that's the case in most cultures. We have our own Language Poetry, which doesn't interest me either.

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

Poetry is one of the destinies of speech... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.

Poetry doesn't function by saying things straightforwardly because the language is too imprecise, too limited often, to address the underlying subject of most poems.

Poetry is an art practiced with the terribly plastic material of human language.

Poetry is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate.

Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.

Poetry is either language lit up by life or life lit up by language

Poetry is language in orbit.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

poetry is where the language is renewed.

Poetry is a language for when you can't quite write prose about something, you can't quite say it, but if you do a poem, it kind of gets to the point.

Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.

Poetry is language surprised in the act of changing into meaning.

Poetry is very playful with language. I think all poetry, at its heart, is playful. It's doing unusual and playful things with the language, stirring it up. And prose is not doing that. Primarily it's not attempting to do that.

Poetry is the language of extremity. Poetry is a transfer of potency. You feel something potent and then you transfer it onto the page.

Poetry is the memory of language

Poetry is ... the physical enactment of a process of knowing by means of language.

Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult...The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.

Poetry takes you into the recesses of the language, the neglected corners, cracks and crannies and to the big sky of wonder. It opens the door to a critique without which you have rather boring analytical tools by comparison. To cultivate poetry means to stay with it. Not to abandon hope, but to abide.

Poetry should help, not only to refine the language of the time, but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.

Poetry was syllable and rhythm. Poetry was the measurement of breath. Poetry was time make audible. Poetry evoked the present moment; poetry was the antidote to history. Poetry was language free from habit.

Poetry reminds us of the truths about life and human nature that we knew all along, but forgot somehow because they weren't yet in memorable language.

Poetry uses language to create a music borne inside human experiences and emotions.

Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.

Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do.

Pop music has greater power to change people and to affect people because it's a universal language. You don't have to understand music to understand the power of a pop song.

Poststructuralism. . . . is a form of literary criticism that uses elaborate wordplay to prove its central premise, that all language is internally contradictory and has no fixed meaning.

Praise is the symbol which represents sympathy, and which the mind insensibly substitutes for its recollection and language.

Practice the vocabulary of love - unlearn the language of hate and contempt.

Prayers have no boundaries. They can leap miles and continents and be translated instantly into any language.

Prayer no longer seems like an activity to me; it has become the continuing language of the relationship I believe God designed to fulfill a human life.

Prayer is the language of a man burdened with a sense of need.

Precision about language can be really, really annoying. It can make you miss the point of what the other person is saying altogether.

Procrastination is the longest word in the language, but there's only one letter between its ends when they occupy their proper places in the alphabet.

Programming languages, like pizzas, come in only too sizes; too big and too small.

Profanity is the parlance of the fool. Why curse when there is such a magnificent language with which to discourse?

Profound thought is conveyed in language of very great simplicity and purity.

Programming languages are like girlfriends: The new one is better because *you* are better.

Propaganda, to be effective, must be believed. To be believed, it must be credible. To be credible, it must be true.

Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies.

Punctuation is biological. It is the physical indication of the body-rhythms which the reader is to acknowledge.

Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute.

Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.

Puzzles lead to logical answers; mysteries often force us to stretch language to its limits in an attempt to describe a reality that is just too great to take in properly.