They had nothing in common but the English language, and tried by its help to express what neither of them understood.

It is true that if care is taken to use only a language that it’s understood by graduates in law and economics, you can easily prove that the masses have to be managed from above.

I fell in love the moment I saw her in her grandfather’s kitchen, her dark curls crashing over her Portuguese shoulders. ‘Would you like to drink coffee?’ she smiled.’I’m really not that thirsty.”What? What you...

Music is the Universal Language that allows all people to communicate with each other.

Every writer dreams of a perfect language. Every writer dreams of a language that obeys, that comes to heel. For some this language is spare and pure, pared down to reveal essential truths without ornament...

It may be a silly way, but if you remember that an owl looks like ʌ(OO)ʌ, it will perhaps help you remember that it is pronounced with something close to ‘ʌoo’.

I once saw a small child go to an electric light switch as say, “Mamma, can I open the light?” She was using the age-old language of exploration, the language of art. It was a...

A translator, caught in the space between two tongues. Such people tend to come a little bit unglued from the task of trying to convey meaning from one code to the other. The transfer is...

I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because...

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways...

But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there’s truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it’s gibberish and no...

An important United Nations environmental conference went past 6:00 in the evening when the interpreters’ contracted working conditions said they could leave. They left, abandoning the delegates unable to talk to each other in their...

We’re on the border of this world, speaking a common language. That’s all.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

The art of motion pictures is pictorial and language comes a distant second.

Kao da ga je ugušila neizrečena rečenica”, rekao je neko kasnije, na sahrani ili, možda, u crkvi, dok su čekali sveštenika. (Kraj života)

The strange word nymphomation, used to denote a complex mathematical procedure where numbers, rather than being added together or multiplied or whatever, were actually allowed to breed with each other to produce new numbers.

One day the English language is going to perish. The easy spokenness of it will perish and go black and crumbly — maybe — and it will become a language like Latin that learned people...

There, in the silence that’s never quite silent, I realized that, if there are at least seven thousand wants to speak, there are at least seven thousand ways to listen.

I am starting to talk fast now, and I have to remember to slow down because when I get excited, I start to sound like myself and my American accent goes away.

Great.”They’d trimmed the language to its essentials. Before long it would just be consonants. Then silence.

…there are no sweeter words in the English language (or any other) than husband and wife.

Writing engenders in us certain attitudes toward language. It encourages us to take words for granted. Writing has enabled us to store vast quantities of words indefinitely. This is advantageous on the one hand but...

The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished...

We can only think in a language that we master.

Then I speak to her in a language she has never heard, I speak to her in Spanish, in the tongue of the long, crepuscular verses of Díaz Casanueva; in that language in which Joaquín...

It is true that language is a medium of communication. But most of the people don’t know and they are applying it as tools of hurting others .

When you steal a people’s language, you leave their soul bewildered.

China is having a tough time figuring out what the language is to allow them to back off.

The language in there, I think, is fairly telling as far as his opinion of what occurred there, and how it occurred, and what action we should or should not have taken,

The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance.

Sometimes, language is the sound of longing

Even if you become fluent in a second language, you don’t understand it the same as the language you grew up with and that your mother spoke to you in.

Czy więc nic nigdy nie może zostać naprawdę wyrażone, oddane w swoim stawaniu się anonimowym, nikt nigdy nie zdoła oddać bełkotu rodzącej się chwili, jak to jest, że, urodzeni z chaosu nie możemy nigdy z...

Wen das Wort nicht schlägt, den schlägt auch der Stock nicht.

Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having...

We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse; we carry a museum...

‘No’ is the second shortest word in the English language, but one of the hardest to say.

Words, too, have genuine substance — mass and weight and specific gravity.

Having words opened up a world of possibilities for Martha.

Mr Hawkins said nothing; the Hawkins’ domestic affairs were arranged upon the principle that Fanny supplied the talk and he the silence.

In every language you can imagine, I’ve had people say ‘Appetite For Destruction’ is the soundtrack to their lives. I don’t think you could say something nicer to an entertainer or performer – can’t get...

It was her last breakfast with Bapi, her last morning in Greece. In her frenetic bliss that kept her up till dawn, she’d scripted a whole conversation in Greek for her and Bapi to have...

[l Description of poetry:] It’s better to let others describe it, … The language of Saje’s poems dares the world to be delightful and I’m delighted to see it rise to the challenge. Guillevic once...

It happens all too often – people regret that their language and culture are being lost but at the same time decide not to saddle their own children with the chore of preserving them.

The fact is that very few of us know what words mean; fewer still take the trouble to enquire. We calmly, we carelessly assume that our minds are identical with that of the writer, at...

Who could trust language?

Poetry is, among other things, a criticism of language.

The language I learned was pretty, full of passivity and silence. I had no proper language for the issues of blood and anger, yet much of what went on when I was a child made...

Laments for a dying language”:Coin brassy words at will, debase the coinage;We’re in an if-you-cannot-lick-them-join age, A slovenliness-provides-its-own-excuse age, Where usage overnight condones misusage. Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,Once English, now a vile orangutanguage.