Best 3547 quotes in «language quotes» category

To deny access to translation and interpreting services oppresses human rights and violates laws.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

To have another language is to possess a second soul.

To knock today's prestige dialects off their pedestals, it helps to realize that they are really foul perversions of yesterday's prestige dialects.

To lose your own language was like forgetting your mother, and as sad, in a way.

To make a simple change of a typeface can instantly transform text which had the appearance and tone of a joyous announcement to suddenly convey that of a somber tragedy.

To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funnelled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages. Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he or she has been born -- the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to he accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it be-devils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.

. . . to my surprise I began to know what The Language was about, not just the part we were singing now but the whole poem. It began with the praise and joy in all creation, copying the voice of the wind and the sea. It described sun and moon, stars and clouds, birth and death, winter and spring, the essence of fish, bird, animal, and man. It spoke in what seemed to be the language of each creature. . . . It spoke of well, spring, and stream, of the seed that comes from the loins of a male creature and of the embryo that grows in the womb of the female. It pictured the dry seed deep in the dark earth, feeling the rain and the warmth seeping down to it. It sang of the green shoot and of the tawny heads of harvest grain standing out in the field under the great moon. It described the chrysalis that turns into a golden butterfly, the eggs that break to let out the fluffy bird life within, the birth pangs of woman and of beast. It went on to speak of the dark ferocity of the creatures that pounce upon their prey and plunge their teeth into it--it spoke in the muffled voice of bear and wolf--it sang the song of the great hawks and eagles and owls until their wild faces seemed to be staring into mine, and I knew myself as wild as they. It sang the minor chords of pain and sickness, of injury and old age; for a few moments I felt I was an old woman with age heavy upon me.

To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices.

To put it another way, language is a tool box and swearing is a hammer. You can try to pound a nail into a piece of wood with the handle of your screwdriver, with your wrench, or with your pliers, but it's only your hammer that's perfectly designed for the job.

To remain far-sighted, you need to surround yourself with far-sighted visionaries. You need to surround yourself with people who think like you. You need to surround yourself with people who speak the same language as you. You need to surround yourself with people who fight and refuse to give up on their destiny. You need to surround yourself with people whose testimonies give you reasons to press on.

To say that one goes on holiday is to speak the language of the working class, for whom the time off appears merry and playful; but to say one goes on vacation is to speak the language of the ruling class. Vacation comes from the same root as vacant and reflects what the owner sees when he looks around the floor—a vacancy where John 'should' 'be'. (I suspect that the owner probably thinks some negative thoughts about the Labor Unions and the 'damned Liberal' Government that force him to pay John even when John 'is vacant.') I leave it as a puzzle for the reader: Do the Irish and English speak Working Class in this case because they have had several socialist governments, or have the had several socialist governments because they learned to speak the language of the Working Class? And: has the U.S., alone among industrial nations, never had a socialist government because it speaks the Ruling Class language, or does it speak the Ruling Class language because it has never had a socialist government?

To speak only one language is to do yourself a great injustice.

To speak a language that was as intimate and free as certain dreams, saying darkly, thrillingly, My cock inside of you. Your come in my mouth ... He focused on the boy’s slim, tight hips; with the tip of his tongue he tasted an asshole’s bitter, forbidden mystery.

To start speaking my language start reading what I read... start reading what I have written. Listen to what I have listened.

Touch me again with your speaking. The hectic crowded feeling of being: I would drink it all in. Brimming with things that swell, and make me flip over on myself: elation and jealousy and spasms of love.

To understand Jesus Christ, you must know the Language of Heaven.

To walk through unknown streets in cities where you are merely learning the language is to force yourself into a new state of hypervigilance. You are a traveler, and hopefully not just a tourist, and must appear calm, but maintain your bearings. Not to get too lost, too off course and without alternatives, without an escape plan in the event of a dangerous situation.

Tourists and imperialists do not come to be taught. They call things the way they call things at home.

To use language is to enter into the territory of categories, which are as necessary as they are dangerous.

TO VICTOR HUGO OF MY CROW PLUTO “Even when the bird is walking we know that it has wings.”—VICTOR HUGO Of: my crow Pluto, the true Plato, azzurronegro green-blue rainbow — Victor Hugo, it is true we know that the crow “has wings,” however pigeon-toe- inturned on grass. We do. (adagio) Vivorosso “corvo,” although con dizionario io parlo Italiano— this pseudo Esperanto which, savio ucello you speak too — my vow and motto (botto e totto) io giuro è questo credo: lucro è peso morto. And so dear crow— gioièllo mio— I have to let you go; a bel bosco generoso, tuttuto vagabondo, s erafino uvaceo Sunto, oltremarino verecondo Plato, addio. (((((Impromptu equivalents for esperanto madinusa (made in U.S.A.) for those who might not resent them. azzurro-negro: blue-black vivorosso: lively con dizionario: with dictionary savio ucello: knowing bird botto e totto: vow and motto io giuro: I swear è questo credo: is this credo lucro è peso morto: profit is a dead weight gioièllo mio: my jewel a bel bosco: to lovely woods tuttuto vagabondo: complete gypsy serafino uvaceo: grape-black seraph sunto: in short verecondo: modest))))

Toxemia. A word that starts so harsh and ends so gently.

Translation software is not making translators obsolete. Has medical diagnostic software made doctors obsolete?

Tragedy's language stresses that whatever is within us is obscure, many faceted, impossible to see. Performance gave this question of what is within a physical force. The spectators were far away from the performers, on that hill above the theatre. At the centre of their vision was a small hut, into which they could not see. The physical action presented to their attention was violent but mostly unseen. They inferred it, as they inferred inner movement, from words spoken by figures whose entrances and exits into and out of the visible space patterned the play. They saw its results when that facade opened to reveal a dead body. This genre, with its dialectics of seen and unseen, inside and outside, exit and entrance, was a simultaneously internal and external, intellectual and somatic expression of contemporary questions about the inward sources of harm, knowledge, power, and darkness.

Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margin of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world. Mrs Winterson objected to what I had put in, but it seemed to me that what I had left out was the story’s silent twin. There are so many things that we can’t say, because they are too painful. We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening. It is a version, but never the final one. And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold. When we write we offer the silence as much as the story. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken. Mrs Winterson would have preferred it if I had been silent. Do you remember the story of Philomel who is raped and then has her tongue ripped out by the rapist so that she can never tell? I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.

Truth-telling is difficult because the varieties of untruth are so many and so well disguised. Lies are hard to identify when they come in the form of apparently innocuous imprecision, socially acceptable slippage, hyperbole masquerading as enthusiasm, or well-placed propaganda. These forms of falsehood are so common, and even so normal, in media-saturated, corporately controlled culture that truth often looks pale, understated, alarmist, rude, or indecisive by comparison. Flannery O’Connor’s much-quoted line ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd’ has a certain prophetic force in the face of more and more commonly accepted facsimiles of truth - from PR to advertising claims to propaganda masquerading as news.

Try as I might, I can't write you—it’s like nailing sunlight onto this white page. I cannot, for you are a dream of yourself. You who is my beginning and my destination, even my path is You. This is Love. But what is love? A silent four-letter word, when the music of the entire language is You. You see beyond me, and into my possibilities. But all my possibilities lead to You. For it was written that I would love you, that it'd be your destiny to greet me. That You would be my destiny, and the rememberers will utter my poems only because I loved You. Try as I might, I can’t write you—it’s like nailing sunlight onto this white page. I cannot. But reading this here it is clear: You are the poem writing me.

Trying to take away someone’s language is usually the first step in trying to change them.

Try telling the boy who’s just had his girlfriend’s name cut into his arm that there’s slippage between the signifier and the signified. Or better yet explain to the girl who watched in the mirror as the tattoo artist stitched the word for her father’s name (on earth as in heaven) across her back that words aren’t made of flesh and blood, that they don’t bite the skin. Language is the animal we’ve trained to pick up the scent of meaning. It’s why when the boy hears his father yelling at the door he sends the dog that he’s kept hungry, that he’s kicked, then loved, to attack the man, to show him that every word has a consequence, that language, when used right, hurts.

Try to understand how they feel - put yourselves in their place. Imagine you are in a foreign country with no money, possessions or friends. You cannot speak the language; the culture is completely different to your normal environment; isolated and helpless. You would be dependent on someone supporting you. Think of that when you next meet someone who is autistic...

Two languages in one brain? No one can live at that speed!

Twist a tongue, and tongue a twist how many twists can a tongue twister twist around their twisting tongue. If a tongue twister's tongue could twist, how many twists would the tongue twister's tongue twist while their tongue was a twisting.

Two demons: one who insists that what is to be inferred by verbal processes must correspond to experience; and one who 'insists that what cannot be arrived at by verbal processes cannot correspond to experience.

Ukiipenda sana nchi yako ni rahisi sana kuichukia serikali yake!

Uh, she said maybe your eyes matched the Fog like a synchronous magnetic field?” “I don’t even know what language that is.

Unlike most other language — which is stored in cerebral cortex, the brain’s center for higher learning — curse words are stored in the limbic system, our most basic, lizard brain level.

Une langue étrangère, c'est comme un muscle frêle, délicat. Si l'on ne s'en sert pas, il s'affaiblit.

Universal grammar is about what language is: it is to be distinguished from prescriptive grammars, often distilled in newspaper columns, which tell us what language should be. We are all entitled to our own opinions of what is appropriate, be it in the arrangement of words or flowers - as long as we keep in mind that these are just opinions. The properties of universal grammar linguists have unearthed, however, are a useful defense when language "authorities" try to rationalize their pontifications: none of the don'ts they advertise can be found in the book of universal grammar.

Up and down' is Irish for anything at all--from crying into the dishes to full-blown psychosis. Though, now that I think about, a psychotic is more usually 'not quite herself'.

Use simple words everyone knows, then everyone will understand.

Using a single word to describe two different things suggests a disregard for the world's real diversity which bears comparison with that shown by the cliché user.

Use language what you will, you can never say anything but what you are.

Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror. Speech is a social chart of this bog.

Verbalize someone's actions back to them. Menace them with language, the language mirror. Death by feedback.

Verbing Weirds Language only if you're expecting it to work in a simple way. This is a special case of the more general truth that Language Weirds.

Usipomlea mtoto wako vizuri, atakapopata shida akiwa mkubwa, na wewe utapata shida pia. Kama unadhani ameshindikana, ongea lugha anayoielewa.

Voices have a language of their own and communicate much more than the words that they say.

Vielleicht ist es so, dass nur das, was nicht ausgesprochen worden ist, durchlebt werden muss.

We all know that there are language forms that are considered impolite and out of order, no matter what truths these languages might be carrying. If you talk with a harsh, urbanized accent and you use too many profanities, that will often get you barred from many arenas, no matter what you’re trying to say. On the other hand, polite, formal language is allowed almost anywhere even when all it is communicating is hatred and violence. Power always privileges its own discourse while marginalizing those who would challenge it or that are the victims of its power.

We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable.