language quotes

Be not a slave of words.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes, and I may try to express it in words afterwards.

I used to be a great fan of doing crosswords. When you’re fiddling around with anagrams, you get wonderful jumbles of syllables that become interesting.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

Black men don’t like to be called ‚boys,‘ but women accept being called ‚girls.‘

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.

I remember the first time I heard a teenager say ‚LOL.‘ Just what? But it means ‚laugh.‘ Why don’t you just laugh? What are you doing?

I grew up cursing a lot.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.