Quotes about Language

The act of naming is the great and solemn consolation of mankind

I have no sounds that could serve to soothe me, no violoncello like him, no lament that anyone would recognize as a lament because it sounds subdued, in an inexpressibly tender language. I have only these lines on the yellowish paper and words that are never new, for they keep saying the same thing through an entire life.

What is being lost is the magic of the word. I am not an image person. Imagery belongs to another civilization: the caveman. Caveman couldn't express himself so he put images on walls.

To speak about this universal force that will lead us beyond on the last horizon of our known self toward a wiser, more loving, more luminous states of being, we do not need to invent a new language. But we do need to listen to the old, the ancient one, not with our jaded minds, but with our awakened souls.

A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.

Almost anything can be funny if said the right way - but it has to be said the right way.

Listen to your life. Listen to what happens to you because it is through what happens to you that God speaks... It's in language that's not always easy to decipher, but it's there, powerfully, memorably, unforgettably.

Never impose your language on people you wish to reach.

Music therapy was so important in the early stages of my recovery because it can help retrain different parts of your brain to form language centers in areas where they weren't before you were injured.

A programming language is for thinking about programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. It should be a pencil, not a pen.

Where do the words go when we have said them?

But the adjectives change," said Jimmy. "Nothing's worse than last year's adjectives.