872 quotes found
“Verbing Weirds Language only if you're expecting it to work in a simple way. This is a special case of the more general truth that Language Weirds.”
“Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.”
“Sunday, the day for the language of leisure.”
“Poetry is, among other things, a criticism of language.”
“Language most shews a man: Speak, that I may see thee.”
“Definitions, contrary to popular opinion, tell us nothing about things. They only describe people's linguistic habits; that is, they tell us what noises people make under what conditions.”
“There is a rhythm to our language. they echo the rhythm of our life.”
“[L]anguage functions best when we mediate between the descriptive and prescriptive influences, changing the rules to better suit some things, but sticking to them for others.”
“The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”
“Zo threw up her hands in exasperation. "I hate this language. It changes too often!”
“Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.”
“A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting sounds has no right to be anywhere - no right to live. Remember that you are a human being with a soul and the divine gift to articulate speech: th...”
“We sleep in language if language does not come to wake us up with its strangeness.”
“...he wonders by what process virtually any discussion about the war seems to profane these ultimate matters of life and death. As if to talk of such things properly we need a mode of speech near t...”
“She walks to a tableShe walk to table She is walking to a tableShe walk to table now What difference does it makeWhat difference it make In Nature, no completenessNo sentence really complete though...”
“I never knew what language they'd lapse into when fucked - Urdu or Telugu or a mix of both (only the techies came in English).”
“Whether the vessel is a legal document or a rap song, language is often chosen ot exclude. To use a scholarly phrase, "discourse communities" are often gated,so it's the good writer's job to offer ...”
“Striving to convey to this beloved audience of one what was going on around me during those five years, I learned the power of language to map a life, to overcome a distance, to focus attention on ...”
“The language of mathematics differs from that of everyday life, because it is essentially a rationally planned language. The languages of size have no place for private sentiment, either of the ind...”
“How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.”
