Quotes About Language

“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Meow” means “woof” in cat.”
― George Carlin

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
― Rumi

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Anyone can speak Troll. All you have to do is point and grunt.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”
― C.S. Lewis

“i do not say 'good-bye.' i believe that's one of the bullshittiest words ever invented. it's not like you're given the choice to say 'bad-bye' or 'awful-bye' or 'couldn't-care-less-about-you-bye.' every time you leave, it's supposed to be a good one. well, i don't believe in that. i believe against that.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”
― Rumi

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”
― Stephen Fry, Moab Is My Washpot

“I often fantasize about torturing some of the lazier letters of the alphabet, like C, U, and E, because together they only manage to accomplish as much as the solitary letter Q.”
― Jarod Kintz, It Occurred to Me

“Instead of the word 'love' there was an enormous heart, a symbol sometimes used by people who have trouble figuring out the difference between words and shapes.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Carnivorous Carnival

“In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.”
― Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

“From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“The past is always tense, the future perfect.”
― Zadie Smith

“From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”
― Winston Churchill

“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”
― Margaret Atwood, Der blinde Mörder

“The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”
― W.H. Auden, The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose: Volume II. 1939-1948

“I know all those words, but that sentence makes no sense to me.”
― Matt Groening

“Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.”
― Stephen Fry

“To read makes our speaking English good.”
― Joss Whedon

“The menu is not the meal.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
― George Orwell

“I’m bilingual, speaking English and body language. I prefer the latter, because I can speak it silently and without listening and while my back is turned.
”
― Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks

“You could duct tape my mouth shut, and I'd still talk too much. I talk with my hands, so you have to listen hard to hear me. You'll hear my flattering words when you see me clap. Hello and goodbye are the same word, in the language of the hand. When I talk with my hands, I might be agreeable and say "Ok." Or I might be calling you an asshole. But let's face it, I am agreeable, and you are an asshole.”
― Jarod Kintz, American Association for the Advancement of Aardvarks Presents: Dear Natalie