Quotes about Language

Could the word 'iron' be the root from which 'irony' is derived?

To teach reading, means to light the fire; every syllable spelled out sparkles.

Having an immense reserve fund of wrath to get rid of, and not knowing what to do with it, he continued to address his daughter as you instead of thou for the next three months.

Words can be liars, we must not blindly believe what they say.

I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.

Now, perhaps, we are in a better position to understand the abyss separating Sabina and Franz: he listened eagerly to the story of her life and she was equally eager to hear the story of his, but although they had a clear understanding of the logical meaning of the words they exchanged, they failed to hear the semantic susurrus of the river flowing through them.

Perhaps if they had stayed together longer, Sabina and Franz would have begun to understand the words they used. Gradually, timorously, their vocabularies would have come together, like bashful lovers, and the music of one would have begun to intersect with the music of the other. But it was too late now.

Love begins with a metaphor. Love begins at a point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

all languages that derive from Latin form the word compassion by combining the prefix meaning with (com-) and the root meaning suffering

Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.

There is nothing harder to explain than humor.

The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows no voice to filter in from the outside.