The thing he said aloud did not succeed.

He is forced to coin words himself, and, taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other (as perhaps the people of Babel did in the beginning), so to...

Language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact thing, but a compromise- that which is common to you, me, and everybody.

Striving to convey to this beloved audience of one what was going on around me during those five years, I learned the power of language to map a life, to overcome a distance, to focus...

During the Reformation and the Enlightenment, nature came to be understood in a mechanistic sense as bereft of any capacity for divine grace or revelation. We’ll explore this suggestion further in the next chapter. In...

It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one’s own.

Christian” has an eulogistic rather than a descriptive sense: e.g. “Christian standards” means simply “high moral standards”. The presupposition “So-and-so is not a Christian” would only be taken to be a criticism of his behavior,...

I believe language is infinitely malleable, a live being in our hands, which deserves our great respect and curiosity

The whole of language is a continuous process of metaphor, and the history of semantics is an aspect of the history of culture; language is at the same time a living thing and a museum...

Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French.

We might hypothetically possess ourselves of every technological resource on the North American continent, but as long as our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the...

I’m sorry.’ The two most inadequate words in the English language.

He liked to start sentences with okay, so. It was a habit he had picked up from the engineers. He thought it made him sound smarter, thought it made him sound like them, those code...

Kwa nini tuseme a.k.a na si k.k.k au k.n.k au k.a.k? Lazima tujifunze kuipenda na kuitetea lugha yetu kwa usumbufu wa vizazi vijavyo.

HOSTESS. Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.NEPOMMUCK. Too perfectly. Can you shew me any English woman who speaks English as it should be spoken? Only foreigners who have been taught to speak it speak it...

Individual words, sounds, squiggles on paper with no meanings other than those with which our imagination can clothe them.

We, Brandy and Alfa and me, we’ve been speaking English as a second language so long that we’ve forgotten it as our first.I have no native tongue.

I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.

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

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder that such trivial people should muse and thunder in such lovely language.

Questions that pertain to the foundations of mathematics, although treated by many in recent times, still lack a satisfactory solution. Ambiguity of language is philosophy’s main source of problems. That is why it is of...

To this day, good English usually means the English wealthy and powerful people spoke a generation or two ago.

when a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world.

At no time did I use abusive language.

All the time when I speak to you, even now, I’m saying not precisely what I think, but what will impress you and make you respond. That’s so even between us – and how much...

Instead of sidewalks, why not sideruns? After all, the pace of life is faster than it has ever been, so I think our infrastructure’s nomenclature should reflect that.

The language of sword is less powerful than the language of word, but most ofthe people understand the language of sword with greater power than thelanguage of word.

I have managed not to finish certain books. With barely a twinge of conscience, I hurl down what bores me or doesn’t give what I crave: ecstasy, transcendence, a thrill of mysterious connection. For, more...

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...

Instead of the word ‘love’ there was an enormous heart, a symbol sometimes used by people who have trouble figuring out the difference between words and shapes.

Our sins are sins of language.

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

Everything is language.

The language of mathematics differs from that of everyday life, because it is essentially a rationally planned language. The languages of size have no place for private sentiment, either of the individual or of the...

Secrecy is the language of time.

Trying something new is like daring to speak a foreign language, you bite your tongue at first, memorize and thereafter sing it as if you were pretending to be unacquainted.

starving” was to speak a lie. An unintentioned lie, of course. But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered. Did he understand that? they asked him. And...

Contentment can only be found in not envying others or comparing yourself to them but in being satisfied with what you have.

It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content…it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to...

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

‘Rednecks’ always made me nervous to play, but I’m glad I wrote it and I continue to play it. It’s just that the language is so rough.

Prestare attenzione a ciò che con-viene al dire pensante non implica solo che noi ogni volta meditiamo su che cosa dire dell’essere e su come dirlo. Resta altrettanto essenziale riflettere se si possa dire ciò...

Some people us language to describe the lives they lead, and other people use language to create the lives they lead.

Telugu-Tamil producer Thyagarajan has bought the South Indian language rights for two Hindi hit films, Vikas Behl’s ‘Queen’ and Neeraj Pandey’s ‘Special 26.’ He wants me to play Akshay Kumar’s role in the Telugu version...

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.

Words are power. The more words you know and can recognize, use, define, understand, the more power you will have as a human being… The more language you know, the more likely it is that...

Language is power that gets abused all the time, Robin, but we’ve got real enemies out there somewhere and until they’re out of the picture, I won’t get knotted up over people who don’t get...

Sex is a matter of biology, while gender is a matter of grammar, and there is no earthly reason why sex should be involved in gender distinctions.

To excavate is to open a book written in the language that the centuries have spoken into the earth.