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.

Then, as now, I believe that the English use language to hide what they mean.

There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and...

We believe that information is an enlightening agent, but I can assure you it is not. We consume information, but we can’t read. We forgot how to sit down and engage the dense layers of...

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

It seems that in almost all societies, the attitudes that people have to language change is basically the same. People everywhere tend to say that the older form of a language is in some sense...

We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems.

I listen to people talking sometimes, that great river that is language, with all its undercurrents of grammar and nuance, and I wonder how we all learn so quickly to speak it, given that we...

Well,’ said Can o’ Beans, a bit hesitantly,’ imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings.’Huh?’Quite so. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans’ insane...

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

Just a month after the completion of the Declaration of Independence, at a time when he delegates might have been expected to occupy themselves with more pressing concerns -like how they were going to win...

The language of nature is silence.

One of the difficulties of thinking clearly about anything is that it is almost impossible not to form our ideas in words which have some previous association for us; with the result that our thought...

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....

Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

Most adults have a vocabulary of around 60,000 words, meaning that children must learn 10 to 20 words a day between the ages of eight months and 18 years. And yet the most frequent 100...

Language does have the power to change reality. Therefore, treat your words as the mighty instruments they are – to heal, to bring into being, to remove, as if by magic, the terrible violations of...

I have tasted words, I have seen them. Never had her hands reached out in darkness and felt the texture of pure marble, never had her forehead bent forward and, as against a stone altar,...

She would speak her story in Spanish and la señora Maureen would tell hers in English; it was obvious to her that the two languages did not carry equal weight.

Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see...

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.

Talking about one’s feelings defeats the purpose of having those feelings. Once you try to put the human experience into words, it becomes little more than a spectator sport. Everything must have a cause, and...

Music is the sweetest language for hearts, kindest prayer for souls, peaceful breeze for minds, and a magical sail for imaginations.

I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the...

The ancient Hebrews did not write the name of God. I often wish the Christians would follow suit, as never was a word more misused in writing and speaking than the name of the Lord.

Language is a social energy, and our capacity for articulate speech is the key factor that makes us different from other species. We are not as fast as cheetahs – or even as horses. Nor...

The children are in love but do not know with what. They talk in gibberish, muse themselves into an indefinable pallor, and when they are completely at a loss they invent a language that maddens...

God did not give us the gospel to convince humanity; the gospel was given to us to master the language of a new world called God’s Paradise. John 15:16.

Language can’t describe reality. Literature has no stable reference, no real meaning. Each reader’s interpretation is equally valid, more important than the author’s intention. In fact, nothing in life has meaning. Reality is subjective. Values...

It is a question of putting into the text the language of our accord.

Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.

Eating words and listening to them rumbling in the gut is how a writer learns the acid and alkali of language. It is a process at the same time physical and intellectual. The writer has...

Poetry translation is like playing a piano sonata on a trombone.

Sometimes in composition class, when I have been confronted by someone who simply cannot get the first word written on paper, I give the following advice: Say your essay into a tape recorder and then...

Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication.-Aunt Beast

If, as I suspect, my body survives by uttering itself over and over again, then I have some questions. If [I] am one word, so are my daughters, so are all of us in strings...

The first prerequisite for fine literature is that the writer must see the language not as a transparent medium for self-expression or the representation of reality, but as a medium one must struggle with to...

Sometimes we speak different languages, but our hearts are the same.

Language is man’s way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals.

When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make...

Du hast so viele Leben, wie du Sprachen sprichst. (You have as many lives as the number of languages you speak.)

Wow, I miss Latin. So much fun – all those exciting verbs that don’t come unit the end of the sentence. It’s like a movie trailer for language.

War is what happens when language fails

There is a rhythm to our language. they echo the rhythm of our life.

The English language is the tongue now current in England and her colonies throughout the world and also throughout the greater part of the United States of America. It sprang from the German tongue spoken...

Four-letter words have always offended me. I cringe at hearing them. Can’t, don’t, and won’t are the worst.

You can’t turn a sunset into a string of grunts without losing something.

There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

There is no use indicting words, they are no shoddier than what they peddle.