Quotes about Language

It is true I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell. 

You must understand the language of your enemy.

REACTIVE LANGUAGE PROACTIVE LANGUAGE There's nothing I can do. Let's look at our alternatives. That's just the way I am. I can choose a different approach. He makes me so mad. I control my own feelings. They won't allow that. I can create an effective presentation.

Over, over, there is a soft place in my heart for all that is over, no, for the being over, words have been my only loves, not many.

What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.

If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one's drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one's language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.

everyone began to call them "sharters

Lila!" she said, wincing again. "Such language, honey! Your parents don't let you swear like that around them, do they?" Whoadie folded her arms. "Well, no, they didn't used to," she said. "But they both died in a hurricane when I was little, so now I get to say whatever the fuck I want.

The first and most important thing of all, at least for writers today, is to strip language clean, to lay it bare down to the bone.

Language is not primarily informational but revelatory. The Holy Scriptures give witness to a living voice sounding variously as Father, Son and Spirit, addressing us personally and involving us personally as participants. This text is not words to be studies in the quiet preserves of a library, but a voice to be believed and loved and adored in workplace and playground, on the streets and in the kitchen. Receptivity is required.

We learn the language of prayer by immersing ourselves in the language that God uses to reveal Himself to us.

I am interested in cultivating the fundamentally holy nature of all language, including most definitely the casual, spontaneous , unselfconscious conversational language.