872 quotes found
“Where there is meaning, there is paradigm, and where there is paradigm (opposition), there is meaning . . . elliptically put: meaning rests on conflict (the choice of one term against another), and...”
“Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound.”
“They are the efforts of someone who, overarced by stars that are human handiwork, and who, shelterless in this till now undreamt of sense and thus most uncannily in the open, goes with his very bei...”
“It would seem that, through touch, through kissing, we might have gouged a worm-size channel through which crucial information could pass, sublingual messages, the kind of pre-verbal intimacy that ...”
“I believe language is infinitely malleable, a live being in our hands, which deserves our great respect and curiosity”
“To speak only one language is to do yourself a great injustice.”
“And on the way home I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.”
“I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness...”
“I think we can all agree that the official language of the United States should be Latin.”
“Reachable, near and not lost, there remained in the midst of the losses this one thing: language. It, the language, remained, not lost, yes, in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its o...”
“I have always wanted to go to Trieste because it sounds like tristesse, which is a light-hearted word, even though in French it means sadness. In Spanish it is tristeza, which is heavier than Frenc...”
“It is commonplace to talk as if the world "has" meaning, to ask what "is" the meaning of a phrase, a gesture, a painting, a contract. Yet when thought about, it is clear that events are devoid of m...”
“We unfortunately identify people by their religion, but my question is that, how can you say that we got different religious when we all smile in a same language..!”
“Was there little time between the invention of language and the coming of true and false?”
“Humans have invented all kinds of symbols to communicate not only with other humans but more importantly with ourselves.”
“[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get...”
“Man lives 'in' meanings, in that which is valid logically, esthetically, religiously. The most fundamental expression of this fact is the language which gives man the power to abstract from the con...”
“Love had to be deeper than that, than a glance over tea, which was indicative but not dispositive.”
“A metaphor is not merely a linguistic expression (a form of words) used for artistic or rhetorical purposes; instead, it is a process of human understanding by which we achieve meaningful experienc...”
“When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to meanneither more nor less.”
