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Language Quotes

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Language Quotes

“The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism.”

WarOpportunityLanguageBlackRaceProgressDrugUniqueRacismReformExposedHostilityWar On DrugsUnique Opportunities
Book:The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
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“Harriet Levin [is] a shining poet in her generation.... The dynamics of her language and her vigorous voice distinguish all her poems. Levin's fearless willingness to tackle any subject combines with her subtle intelligence to produce a rare reading experience, the moving, psychologically sophisticated and intriguing work of a poet with both guts and craft”

MovingReadingLanguageVoiceGenerationsSubjectsProducePoetShiningCraftsFearlessGutsSubtleWillingnessSophisticatedVigorousIntriguingDynamicsReading Experience
Author:Molly Peacock
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“Israel is the very embodiment of Jewish continuity: It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and 2,000-year-old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store.”

YearsTodayEarthNamesSpeakLanguageNationsWrittenLandBearsWorshipYears AgoScriptsIsraelCornersStoresBarsIceSoilCreamCoinsCandyIce CreamContinuityEmbodimentPotteryCandy Stores
Author:Charles Krauthammer
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“What a rare joy it is to linger in the lucid, transcendent worlds of Jennifer Maier's poems. In taut, precise language and lapidary images, Now, Now explores myriad pathways of connection, the ways desire, longing, and imaginative possibility brush up against the everyday, revealing a keen, fiercely compassionate intelligence-a sensibility so finely attuned and so clearly in love with the world that you would follow it almost anywhere.”

WorldWayJoyDesireLanguagePossibilityConnectionsLongingEverydayCompassionateSensibilityPreciseBrushesImaginativeRevealingPathwaysTranscendentJennifer
Author:Rick Hilles
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“H. L Mencken's Dictionary of the American Language supplies a long list of slang terms for being drunk, but the Irish are no slouches, either. They're spannered, rat-arsed, cabbaged, and hammered; ruined, legless, scorched, and blottoed; or simply trolleyed or sloshed. In Kerry, you're said to be flamin'; in Waterford, you're in the horrors; and in Cavan, you've gone baloobas, a tough one to wrap your tongue around if you ARE baloobas. In Donegal, you're steamin', while the afflicted in Limerick are out of their tree.”

IfsLongSaidLanguageTermGoneTreeHorrorToughTongueListsDrunkRatsRuinedWrapsDictionarySuppliesSlangHammeredLimerickBeing DrunkAmerican Language
Author:Bill Barich
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“It is that holy poetry and singing we are after. ... It is the wild singing we are after, our chance to use the wild language we are learning by heart under the sea. When a woman speaks her truth, fires up her intention and feeling, staying tight with the instinctive nature, she is singing, she is living in the wild breath-stream of the soul. To live this way is a cycle in itself, one meant to go on, go on, go on.”

WayHeartSoulUseFeelingsSpeakLanguageChanceFireSeaGoes OnHolySingingBreathsIntentionStreamsStayingCycles
Author:Clarissa Pinkola Estes
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“It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.”

FeelsEnoughWould BeIndividualLanguageCausesAttentionConditionsViolentAlternativesTonightOur SocietyRebellionRiotIrresponsibleUnheardCondemning
Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“The history of religions, of which Christianity is a transcendent element, awaits the deepest study. It requires Bibles to free from Bibles. Comparative theology is the best of studies for liberating one's mind from geographical and traditional limitations. Like travelling, it shows the globe in its varying climates and zones, its latitude and longitude of intelligence. When the races shall have learned each other's language, the significance of things to thoughts, one faith becomes universal, one brotherhood.”

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Author:Amos Bronson Alcott
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“In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs-in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.”

MindHumansWholeEarthTogetherLawPassionLanguageDifferencesGonePoetClimateSpreadDestroyedAll TimeMannersSoilSpiteEmpiresCustomsHuman Society
Book:The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth: Together with a Description of the Country of the Lakes in the North of England, Now First Published with His Works ...
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“Who shall say that those poor peasants were not acting in the spirit we most venerate, most adore; that theirs was not the true heart language which we cannot choose but love? And what has been their reward? They have sent down their name to be the by-word of all after ages; the worst reproach of the worst men a name convertible with atheism and devil-worship.”

MenHeartHas BeensAgeSpiritNamesLanguagePoorActingAtheismWorstWorshipDevilRewardsAdorePeasantsReproachTrue HeartDevil Worship
Book:Fraser's Magazine
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“The First Amendment's language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.”

FirstsMeanMadeLawLanguageSimpleRoomsSpeechPressesCongressAmendmentsFreedom Of SpeechFirst AmendmentInferenceSimple Words
Author:Hugo Black
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“The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. Most of the writing today which is called fiction contains such a poverty of language, such triteness, that it is a shrunken, diminished world we enter, poorer and more formless than the poorest cripple deprived of ears and eyes and tongue. The writer's responsibility is to increase, develop our senses, expand our vision, heighten our awareness and enrich our articulateness.”

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Author:Anais Nin
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“The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.”

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Book:Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
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“Power. like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation. To acquire it, appears not more difficult than to be dispossessed of it when acquired, since it enables the holder to shift his own errors on dependents, and to take their merits to himself. But the miracle of losing it vanishes, when we reflect that we are as liable to fall as to rise, by the treachery of others; and that to say "I am" is language that has been appropriated exclusively to God!”

GivingHas BeensFallLanguageDifficultAuthorityLosingLowsMiracleErrorsMeritAcquireDiamondLiableMeannessTreacheryBeholderExaltationDazzle
Book:Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
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“It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. ... Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends.”

MadeWarLanguageDependsDiscoveryTraditionAncientLegendsEsperanto
Book:The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
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“It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. ...But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another, it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense.”

IfsWellsDoeSometimesEnoughWould BeBeautifulLanguageImpossibleModernExpressionLimitsTongueNonsenseLatinTranslateSevereCompassOne WordUnreasonableProprietyTranslatorsBarbarity
Author:John Dryden
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“Using SROI to explore the value of our online question and answer service, askTheSite, helped us develop new mechanisms for speaking to young people and gain a real insight into the impact of our work. The project enabled us to demonstrate YouthNets commitment to robust impact measurement as well as our commercial approach to project evaluation. Perhaps most importantly, being able to assign a monetary value to askTheSite has enabled YouthNet to convey to current and potential funders how valuable the service is for both young people and the wider society in a language that they understand”

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Author:Sarah McCoy
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“The passion for travelling is, I believe, instinctive in some natures. We have seen men persevere in their enterprises against the most formidable obstacles; and, without means or friends, and even ignorant of the languages of the various countries through which they passed, pursue their perilous journeys into remote places, until, like the knight in the Arabian tale, they succeeded in snatching a memorial from every shrine they visited.”

MenBelieveMeanCountryPassionLanguageI BelieveJourneyVariousObstaclesTalesIgnorantPursueEnterpriseMemorialKnightsPersevereFormidableShrinesArabianRemote Places
Book:A Voyage Round the World: Volume I, Including Travels in Africa, Asia, Australasia, America, etc., etc., from 1827 to 1832
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