Quotes about Language

Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.

I love words but I don't like strange ones. You don't understand them and they don't understand you. Old words is like old friends, you know 'em the minute you see 'em.

The Eskimo has fifty-names for snow because it is important to them there ought to be as many for love.

In Re-framing, you interpret the event in a positive way. You change your language . Instead if defining it as a problem you re-frame it as a situation. A problem is something that is upsetting and stressful. A situation is something that you simply deal with.

Resolve today to think and talk only about the things you want in life and refuse to talk about the things you don't want.

I am speaking of University Education, which implies an extended range of reading, which has to deal with standard works of genius, or what are called the classics of a language: and I say, from the nature of the case, if Literature is to be made a study of human nature, you cannot have a Christian Literature. It is a contradiction in terms to attempt a sinless Literature of a sinful man.

They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated other animals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now emerging into consciousness. At an ever-accelerating pace, it invented writing, cities, art and science, and sent spaceships to the planets and the stars. These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.

But the male lexicographers had somehow neglected to coin a word for the dislike of men. They were almost entirely men themselves, she thought, and had been unable to imagine a market for such a word.

I would expect a significant development and elaboration of language in only a few generations if all the chimps unable to communicate were to die or fail to reproduce. Basic English corresponds to about 1,000 words. Chimpanzees are already accomplished in vocabularies exceeding 10 percent of that number.

He wants it both ways—the language and credibility of science, but without being bound by its method and rules.

Perhaps the locale of the subjunctive mood will one day be found. Will Latins turn out to be extravagantly endowed and English-speaking peoples significantly short-changed in this minor piece of brain anatomy?

I can give you the King's English and then I can take it to the street, but do both or do one and don't do one knowing only the street. That's going to hold you back because what comes out is going to impress people, and it will impress them negatively.