quotations about language
You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Tempest
He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
I don't speak ... I operate a machine called language. It creaks and groans, but is mine own.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
The power of language lies in combining meaningless sounds into words that in turn are combined into phrases. Research on the communication systems of non-human primates and birds suggests that the ability to combine meaningless vocal elements has evolved repeatedly, but the evolution of syntax (i.e. combining different words to form more complex expressions) was so far considered to be unique to human language.
DAVID WHEATCROFT
"Syntax is not unique to human language", Eureka Alert!, March 8, 2016
I am adding another language to the spoken language, and I am trying to restore to the language of speech its old magic, its essential spellbinding power, for its mysterious possibilities have been forgotten.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
letter to J.P., Sep. 28, 1932
A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences.
TONI MORRISON
Nobel Lecture, Dec. 7, 1993
Language is called the garment of thought: however, it should rather be, language is the flesh-garment, the body, of thought.
THOMAS CARLYLE
Sartor Resartus
Neither rings, bright chains, nor bracelets, perfumes, flowers, nor well-trimmed hair, Grace a man like polished language, th' only jewel he should wear.
BHARTRHARI
"The Praise of the Wise Man"
Language is inherently not concerned with logic. As an expression of the psychological activities of humankind, it simply follows a linear process as it seeks actualisation. Moreover, it does not obey the objective concepts of time and space that belong to the physical world. When the discussion of time and space is imported into linguistic art from scientific aims and research methods, that linguistic art is entirely reduced to trifling pseudo-philosophical issues.
GAO XINGJIAN
The Case for Literature
Without our language, we have lost ourselves. Who are we without our words?
MELINA MARCHETTA
Finnikin of the Rock
In the acquisition of languages by direct study, where time can be afforded for the purpose, it is found that several languages, belonging to the same family--as the Latin, Italian, and Spanish, for instance--can be acquired together, almost as easily and rapidly, as either of them can be acquired separately, and with far less chance of their being lost from the memory of disuse. By finding the roots in the parent tongue, and by tracing the growth from these roots outward into different tongues, as it were genealogically, it is found that they descend and spread according to certain organic laws of modification and growth.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Language is such a pervasive feature of being a human being that when you can't talk anymore, people find it very frightening, even if your other cognitive features are pretty much intact. People see it as, you must have a lot of other things wrong with you.
AUDREY HOLLAND
"Aphasia is a little-known, yet growing, health problem", Philly, March 26, 2016
The enterprise of describing something in language that has never been described before is a very difficult thing to do. When you decide to do away with old cliches or old phraseologies, and to come up with a new way of saying something, it's extremely difficult.
GAO XINGJIAN
"A Conversation with Gao Xingjian", Asia Society
Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is.
JOSE SARAMAGO
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced.
HERBERT SPENCER
The Philosophy of Style
Translating from one language to another, unless it is from Greek and Latin, the queens of all languages, is like looking at Flemish tapestries from the wrong side, for although the figures are visible, they are covered by threads that obscure them, and cannot be seen with the smoothness and color of the right side.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
Language should be constantly evolving and changing as the society it reflects changes.
JOHN MCCALLUM
"Language is what it is -- a needed part of societal growth", Cheney Free Press, March 10, 2016
Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Fie, fie upon her!
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Troilus and Cressida
Other than our skin, our language is a significant identifier of us.
FRED ZINDI
"Is language a barrier in music?", The Herald, March 7, 2016