Language Quotes

Political language - And with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - Is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

George Orwell, 1946

Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground.

Noah Webste

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to.... The feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Vincent Van Gogh

Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken.

Egyptian Inscription Recorded at the Time of the Invention of Writing

To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language.

George Santayana

The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.

Eric Hoffe

Meditation is the tongue of the soul and the language of our spirit.

Jeremy Taylo

Duty then is the sublimest word in the English language. You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more, you should never wish to do less.

General Robert E. Lee

Words are the leaves of the tree of language, of which, if some fall away, a new succession takes their place.

Field Marshall John French

I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.

Jane Wagne

Have the wild things no moral or legal rights? What right has man to inflict such long and fearful agony on a fellow creature, simply because that creature does not speak his language?

Ernest Thompson Seton

Sick I am of idle words, past all reconciling, Words that weary and perplex and pander and conceal, Wake the sounds that cannot lie, for all their sweet beguiling The language one need fathom not, but only hear and feel.

George Du Maurie

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

William Butler Yeats

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Mark Twain

We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language.... We have affection We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a common goal of nature as I can guess at. And finally, and perhaps best of all, we have music.

Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)

Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.

Rita Mae Brown, Starting From Scratch, 1988

No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.

Sam Rayburn

Neither can embellishments of language be found without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can thoughts be made to shine without the light of language.

Cicero

Language exists only on the surface of our consciousness. The great human struggles are played out in silence and in the ability to express oneself.

Franz Xavier Kroetz