Quotes about Language

The German language is so sonorous, isn't it? Beautiful language...the language of poetry. Angry, angry poetry.

In other words, all the highest aims of language are decisively the work of God. They are decisively supernatural. And no amount of poetic effort or expertise in the use of words can bring about the great aims of life if God withholds his saving power.

They sounded different from the mouth of a young mother than they did from the mouth of a widow. This was because the words did not come straight off the page. They percolated up through the silt and gravel of real people's lives so that the meaning in them was fluid, not fixed.

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

Don't use your words to describe your reality. Use your words to create your desired reality.

Sometimes words are harder than blows.

tetragrammaton

The gospel is capable and designed to strike home in every culture, in every age, and in every language.

Since—and this is why it changed how I read the Bible—God chose to communicate in language, since language is always shaped by context, and since God chose to speak to us over time through many writers, God also chose to speak to us in a variety of ways and expressions. Furthermore, I believe that because the gospel story is so deep and wide, God needed a variety of expressions to give us a fuller picture of the Story.

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

There are ten parts of speech and they are all troublesome.

Occasionally, merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we put unoffending Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the incomprehensible jargon of their native language, and while they writhed, we impaled them, we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile verbs and participles.