Popular quotes about Language! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 11
We believe we can also show that words do not have exactly the same psychic "weight" depending on whether they belong to the language of reverie or to the language of daylight life-to rested language or language under surveillance-to the language of natural poetry or to the language hammered out by authoritarian prosodies.
Gaston BachelardPublic speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's language. Of course women learn it. We're not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man's world, so it talks a man's language.
Ursula K. Le GuinExpressing love in the right language. We tend to speak our own love language, to express love to others in a language that would make us feel loved. But if it is not his/her primary love language, it will not mean to them what it would mean to us.
Gary ChapmanThe advantage of the gypsy language, even though I don't understand it that much, the language is perfect melody. So if you propose the movie the way I do, then the language is just one part of the melody. Orchestrating all inside, and the language is following the meaning of what they say, and it's never the same as written.
Emir KusturicaI don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.
David OgilvyLanguage is not a genetic gift, it is a social gift. Learning a new language is becoming a member of the club -the community of speakers of that language.
Frank SmithAsk yourself whether our language is complete--whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.
Ludwig WittgensteinIn your relationship with God there are also times when you want to say things and you're trying to find the words to express them. In a human relationship sometimes you struggle for words and you've got to do it, but in a relationship with God he can actually give you a language which enables you to communicate. In a relationship with God you feel things and you want to express them and you're not limited by human language. You can express what you really feel in your heart, through a language that he gives you, and that helps you to communicate with God.
Nicky GumbelAmerica is not a nation of separation. All our citizens are Americans. The common denominator is our language. Our language is English. The glue that binds generation after generation is both our Constitution and our English language.
James TraficantEverybody has a language or code that they use with their wife or their girlfriend or boyfriend or what have you. It's a language aside from the language they have with strangers.
Ben GibbardFor language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.
Thomas MertonThe language of the moment or, as it were, the language of the order in which we live, is the image. I felt that if I wanted to commune with the public, I should best do so through the language of image. It's a conscious embrace of a contradiction.
Godfrey Reggio... while infants will sync with the human voice regardless of language, they later become habituated to the rhythms of their own language and culture ... ... humans are tied to each other by hierarchies of rhythms that are culture-specific and expressed through language and body movement.
Edward T. HallLanguage is very powerful. Language does not just describe reality. Language creates the reality it describes.
Desmond Tutuwhen Christian theology becomes traditionalism and men fail to hold and use it as they do a living language, it becomes an obstacle, not a help to religious conviction. To the greatest of the early Fathers and the great scholastics theology was a language which, like all language, had a grammar and a vocabulary from the past, but which they used to express all the knowledge and experience of their own time as well.
Lily DougallLiterature belongs first and foremost to the language in which it is being written. The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.
Amos OzI think it's good for anybody to learn languages. Americans are particularly limited in that way. Europeans less so... We're beginning to have Spanish move in on English in the states because of all the people coming from Hispanic countries... and we're beginning to learn some Spanish. And I think that's a good thing... Only having one language is very limiting... You get to think that's the way the human race is made; there's only one language worth speaking... Well, this isn't good for English.
W. S. MerwinAt times it does not really matter what language you are speaking, especially when you are emotional and try to reach other hearts. To transcend emotion, silence is the best language.
Abu Sufyan ibn HarbWhenever the C++ language designers had two competing ideas as to how they should solve some problem, they said, "OK, we'll do them both". So the language is too baroque for my taste.
Donald KnuthChildren must master the language of things before they master the language of words.
Friedrich FrobelThe psychology of a language which, in one way or another, is imposed upon one because of factors beyond one's control, is very different from the psychology of a language which one accepts of one's free will.
Edward SapirOf course, English is a very powerful language, a colonizer's language and a gift to a writer. English has destroyed and sucked up the languages of other cultures - its cruelty is its vitality.
Louise ErdrichColor is a language. It is the language of painting. How painting expresses itself is in large part with color.
Joseph RaffaelSexuality is primarily a means of communicating with other people, a way of talking to them, of expressing our feelings about ourselves and them. It is essentially a language, a body language, in which one can express gentleness and affection, anger and resentment, superiority and dependence far more succinctly than would be possible verbally, where expressions are unavoidably abstract and often clumsy.
Robert C. SolomonWhat I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion. What I'm finding is that in our increasingly dysfunctional U.S. society, marvelous poetry is being written - out of and amid the dysfunction.
Adrienne RichWhen we form heart-centered beliefs within our bodies, in the language of physics we're creating the electrical and magnetic expression of them as waves of energy, which aren't confined to our hearts or limited by the physical barrier of our skin and bones. So clearly we're speaking to the world around us in each moment of every day through a language that has no words: the belief-waves of our hearts.
Gregg BradenI make the case in the book that Standard English, that language we all aspire to live and move and have our being within, is actually based on a fiction. It's not anyone's native way of speaking or writing. That's why we have to take classes in it. Language is just really squishy.
Kory Stamper... I try ... to use my own voice in a way that shows caring, respect, appreciation, and patience. Your voice, your language, help determine your culture. And part of how a corporate culture is defined is how the people who work for an organization use language.
Frances HesselbeinI am a guest of the French language. My poems in French are born of my interaction with the French language, which is not the same as that of a French poet.
Tahar Ben JellounStudy a foreign language if you have opportunity to do so. You may never be called to a land where that language is spoken, but the study will have given you a better understanding of your own tongue or of another tongue you may be asked to acquire.
Gordon B. HinckleyExperiment is necessary in establishing an academy, but certain principles must apply to this business of art as to any other business which affects the artistic tic sense of the community. Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.
Robert MenziesThe angels don't care what words you use. They appreciate the engraved, fancy prayers, but they say, "Just talk to us." You can use ordinary language - the language you use when you talk with your best friend - when you ask for help. If you want to reach out to the angels for something very personal for yourself, you can say, "Dear guardian angels and archangels, I ask that you come to me now and help me resolve this problem or issue." And then you just pour out your heart to the angels. You can do it silently in your mind. You can say it out loud. You can write it.
Doreen VirtueCensors can make a case for zero tolerance in language. They can make the argument that since we don't allow our children to use that language in schools, we also shouldn't give them stories in which it is used.
Chris CrutcherThe poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
Jean CocteauFor a while I felt like I spoke a different language than my immediate family. It wasn't until my teens that I met and got to know better members of my extended family (my cousin Alma in particular) that self- identified as artists. Something in us clicked together; in the way we thought, in the language we chose to use, in what we enjoyed. She helped me see and appreciate a lot both about myself and my loved ones.
E.J. BonillaUnfortunately, we're using the same language to talk about the language we'retalking about.
Donna Jo NapoliAbove all, a book is a riverbank for the river of language. Language without the riverbank is only television talk - a free fall, a loose splash, a spill.
Cynthia OzickIt's no big deal about how you get language to evolve. You cause language to evolve by saying new and intelligent things to each other.
Terence McKennaAt that moment, it seemed to him that time stood still, and the Soul of the World surged within him. When he looked into her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke โ the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well.
Paulo CoelhoIt's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.
Robert A. HeinleinA marvellous power of expression over language often distinguishes genius; but Shakespeare in his phrases seems independent of the bonds of language as of the bonds of metre.
George Edward WoodberryLanguage is not made to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience newspapers, news, proceed by redundancy, in that they tell us what we โmustโ think, retain, expect, etc. language is neither informational nor communicational. It is not the communication of information but something quite different: the transmission of order-words, either from one statement to another or within each statement, insofar as each statement accomplishes an act and the act is accomplished in the statement
Gilles DeleuzeA language is the appearances of connections therefore language as in writing doesn't express anything: it creates.
Kathy AckerThe functional language is a radically anti-historical language: operational rationality has little room and little use for historical reason.
Herbert MarcuseEarth is a place where language has literally become alive. Language has infested matter; it is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us.
Terence McKennaIn my mind, there's nothing wrong with it. I don't instinctively know what's wrong with it. There is a language of the ghetto. There is a language of the barrio. And it's not good. There is an attitude. There is a behavior. There is a mindset and we wouldn't anybody to be stuck in it.
Rush LimbaughI'm a big fan of fiction film where you have a story and you have to transform that into a visual language, basically working with actors and also transforming that into how you pronounce that in the visual language of the shots, the construction of the shots and the lighting. All of that appealed to me from the beginning of my career at the university. When I graduated from the university, I wanted to deal mainly with that, with the visual aspect of the movie.
Dror MorehPhotographers learn to interpret photographs in that technical way because they want to understand and use that 'language' themselves just as musicians learn a more technical musical language than the layman needs. Social scientists who want to work with visual materials will have to learn to approach them in this more studious and time-consuming way.
Howard S. Becker