Language Quotes

Only a novel... in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

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

Rita Mae Brown, Starting From Scratch, 1988

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

Samuel Johnson

Thought is the blossom language the bud action the fruit behind it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Experience becomes possible because of language.

Noam Chomsky, Ruth Anshen, Biography of an Idea (Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell Limited, 1986), pg. 196

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

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

Henry David Thoreau

He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle to steady his fellow countrymen and hearten those Europeans upon whom the long dark night of tyranny had descended.

Edward R. Murrow, On Winston Churchill, 1954

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

We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf of the filed, but not to describe human character.

Henry David Thoreau

As was his language so was his life.

Seneca

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The two most beautiful words in the English language are ``check enclosed.'

Dorothy Parke

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.

Mark Twain

Whoever said Marriage is a 5 - 5 proposition laid the foundation for more divorce fees than any other short sentence in our language.

Austin Elliot

Reality is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes.

Unknown

Own only what you can carry with you know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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

Music is the last true voice of the human spirit. It can go beyond language, beyond age, and beyond color straight to the mind and heart of all people.

Ben Harpe