Language Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

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

Reason" in language - oh, what an old deceptive female she is! I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.

Friedrich Nietzsche

My name is growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Using language like clothes or the skin on your body, with its sleeves, its patches, its transpirations, and its blood and sweat stains, that's what shows a writer's mettle. This is style.

The trodden worm curls up. This testifies to its caution. It thus reduces its chances of being trodden upon again. In the language of morality: Humility.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The language of science is universal, and perhaps scientists have been the most international of all professions in their outlook...Every time you scientists make a major invention, we politicians have to invent a new institution to cope with it—and almost invariably, these days, it must be an international institution.

John F. Kennedy

When I meet people in different parts of the world, I am always reminded that we are all basically alike: we are all human beings. Maybe we have different clothes, our skin is of a different colour, or we speak different languages. That is on the surface. But basically, we are the same human beings. That is what binds us to each other. That is what makes it possible for us to understand each other and to develop friendship and closeness.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

In early times some sufferer had to sit up with a toothache, and he put in the time inventing the German language.

You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you,
For learning me your language!

William Shakespeare

When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.

Henry David Thoreau

Mathematics is more than a tool and language for science. It is also an end in itself, and as such, it has, over the centuries, affected our worldview in its own right.

Stephen Hawking

The language I have learned these forty years,
My native English, now I must forego;
And now my tongue's use is to me no more
Than an unstringed viol or a harp.

William Shakespeare

I still believe in man in spite of man. I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed, and perverted by the enemies of mankind. And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console.

All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.

You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy best among miners; and so with everything else.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"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 humor are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.

What distinguishes the language of science from language as we ordinarily understand the word?... What science strives for is an utmost acuteness and clarity of concepts as regards their mutual relation and their correspondence to sensory data.

Albert Einstein

Faith is not imparted like secular subjects. It is given through the language of the heart.

Abusive language and swearing are a legacy of slavery, humiliation, and disrespect for human dignity, one's own and that of other people.

All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.

Raymond Chandler

In those countries where the morals are the most dissolute, the language is the most severe; as if they would replace on the lips what has deserted the heart.

Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

ASTONISHING, said Death. REALLY ASTONISHING. LET ME PUT FORWARD ANOTHER SUGGESTION: THAT YOU ARE NOTHING MORE THAN A LUCKY SPECIES OF APE THAT IS TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CREATION VIA A LANGUAGE THAT EVOLVED IN ORDER TO TELL ONE ANOTHER WHERE THE RIPE FRUIT WAS.

Terry Pratchett

I am great admirer of China. It has shown great discipline and dedication in attacking n export markets. China is working furiously on its English-language capability and its quality control. As China become stronger, it sends a clear signal that we in India have to harder to stay ahead.

N. R. Narayana Murthy