#Language Quotes

“"Fair, kind, and true" is all my argument,"Fair, kind, and true" varying to other words;And in this change is my invention spent,Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.”

“Thou hast the most unsavoury similes.”

“You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse”

“A man in all the world's new fashion planted, That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.”

“I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words. (Act III, sc. I, 37-38)”

“I cannot speak your england.”

“Ay, is it not a language I speak?”

“Thou frothy tickle-brained hedge-pig!”

“My language! heavens!I am the best of them that speak this speech. Were I but where 'tis spoken.”

“Remuneration! O! That's the Latin word for three farthings”

“Ha. "Against my will I am sent to bid you come into dinner." There's a double meaning in that. -Benedick (Much Ado)”

“How long a time lies in one little word?”

“They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.”

“Thou weedy elf-skinned canker-blossom!”

“A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit; How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!”

“Words are finite expressions of the infinite mind.”

“For mine own part, it was Greek to me.”

“Words are grown so false, I am loath to prove reason with them.”

“Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle;I am no traitor's uncle, and that word "grace"In an ungracious mouth is but profane.”

“For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and horses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.”

“The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.”

“I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.”

“Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.”

“Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.”

“Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.”

“The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language. ... In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections.”

“Women speak two languages - one of which is verbal.”

“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”

“The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.”

“Every word was once a poem.”

“How every fool can play upon the word!”

“Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so paragraphs must fit into another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages.”

“Every word was once a poem. Every new relation is a new word.”

“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”

“If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.”

“Language is fossil Poetry.”

“Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.”

“But, indeed, words are very rascals, since bonds [vows] disgraced them." Viola: "Thy reason, man?" Feste: "Troth [Truthfully], sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them.”

“We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.”

“The language I have learnt these forty years, My native English, now I must forgo; And now my tongue's use is to me no more Than an unstringed viol or a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony.”

“All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honour, duty, mercy, hope.”

“The short words are best, and the old words, when short, are the best of all.”

“Silenceis an ocean. Speech is a river.When the ocean is searching for you, don't walkinto the language-river. Listen to the ocean,and bring your talky business to an end.Traditional words are just babblingin that presence, and babbling is a substitutefor sight.”

“This is how it always is when I finish a poem. A great silence overcomes me and I wonder why I ever thought to use language.”

“Two nations divided by a common language.”

“In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except the alphabet.”

“It is the fault of our rhetoric that we cannot strongly state one fact without seeming to belie some other.”

“See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!”

“We must have a better word than "prefabricated", why not "ready-made"?”

“Everyone has a right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses.”