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Language Quotes

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Language Quotes

“All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.”

Needs Firsts Book Language Lines Levels Alive Reader Pages Finals

Author:Ali Smith

“When I started formulating the first Frank comic, I knew I wanted it to be something that was beyond time and specific place. I felt that having the characters speak would tie it to 20th-century America, because that would be the idiom of the language they would use, the language I use.”

Firsts Character Use Would Be Wanted America Speak Language Felt Century Comic Ties Frank 20th Century Idiom

Author:Jim Woodring

“There is a subset of Democrats who tend to mis-fill out ballots. The way you mark the ballot is like an S.A.T. - you fill in the circle. And the subset of people who tend to, like, put a check there instead, or an X, or fill it out wrong, tend to be people who didn't take S.A.T.s, or first-time voters, or people with English as a second language.”

People Way Firsts Language First Time Mark Democrat Circles Checks Voters Ballots

Author:Al Franken

“The writer's first affinity is not to a loyalty, a tradition, a morality, a religion, but to life itself, and to its representation in language.”

Firsts Language Morality Tradition Loyalty Representation Affinity

Author:Jayne Anne Phillips

“We must look at what immigration to America involves. To the new arrivals, the change is excruciating. Learning a new language and dealing with strange customs make the first years of life in the new land painful... The economic system of the United States is a mighty engine of persuasion. It motivates people to do what otherwise they never would in return for fulfilling their dreams. In the process, people learn that there is no sharp line between physical well-being and the higher purposes of life. The comfort of owning a house is at once meeting the obligation to care for one”

“Physical expression was my first language: Before I was an actor, I was a dancer, an acrobat, a mime and a street performer.”

Firsts Actors Language Streets Expression Dancer Performers Mime Street Performers

Author:Denis Lavant

“In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.”

Firsts Mean Three Language Study Speech Thirds Various Arrangements Persuasion Hypnosis Power Of Persuasion

Book:Rhetoric

Source: Rhetoric

“Most children are given far too much praise for their early drawings, so much so that they rarely learn the ability to refine their first crude efforts the way their early attempts at language are corrected.”

Way Firsts Children Language Given Ability Effort Too Much Praise Drawing Crude

Book:Triskell Tales: Twenty-two Years of Chapbooks

Source: Triskell Tales: Twenty-two Years of Chapbooks

“The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that 'it isn't in the dictionary' - although down to the time of the first lexicographer no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary.”

Ifs Firsts Use Used Language Grows Innovation Following Recognizing Dictionary Unfamiliar Discerning New Words Lexicographer

Book:The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“I am a very simple man. I am a man first, an artist second. My first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow man. I will endeavour to meet this obligation through music, since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries.”

Men Firsts Artist Language Simple Fellows Boundaries Obligation Welfare Fellow Man Endeavour Simple Man

Author:Pablo Casals

“It doesn't matter what the income level of your family is, or if English is the first or second language. It makes no difference. The bottom line is that every child can be an academic champion, an academic champion and a superstar in academics.”

Ifs Firsts Children Matter Language Differences Lines Levels Bottom Income Our Family Champion Academic Bottom Line Superstar

Author:Arnold Schwarzenegger

“It is an agreeable and yet a painful sense of novelty to stand for the first time in the midst of a people whose language and manners are different from one's own.”

People Firsts Different Language First Time Painful Manners Midst Novelty

Book:Views A-foot: Or, Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff

Source: Views A-foot: Or, Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff

“When I [first] went to university, I was doing foreign languages, because I had done them since I was 13 years old. I had done French and German. I picked up Italian, just sort of blasted through the exams, [and then] took off overseas, because I wanted to be an actor. I thought, "I'm just not academic." I'm not very competitive, in terms of acting. But since going back to university, I've realized, I am highly competitive.”

Years Firsts Done Wanted Actors Language Term Acting University Italian Academic Exam Foreign Language

Author:Nick Offerman

“The first time I was in Stockholm, everybody was real cordial, but I started having these nightmares that I was being watched by aliens, basically all the time. My theory on it was that it was really, really unnerving to be in a place where English isn't the first language.”

Firsts Real Language Theory First Time Aliens Nightmare Stockholm

Author:Mikky Ekko

“A common language is a first step towards communication across cultural boundaries.”

Firsts Language Common Steps Communication Boundaries First Steps Common Language

Author:Ethan Zuckerman

“Older boys often asked me to teach them “some bad words in your language”. At first I politely refused. My refusal merely increased their determination, so I solved the problem by teaching them phrases like 'man kharam' which means “I'm an idiot”. I told them that what I was teaching them was so nasty that they would have to promise never to repeat it to anyone. They would then spend all of recess running around yelling “I'm an idiot! I'm an idiot!”. I never told them the truth. I figured someday, somebody would”

Source: Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America

“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.”

Firsts Mean Made Law Language Simple Rooms Speech Presses Congress Amendments Freedom Of Speech First Amendment Inference Simple Words

Author:Hugo Black

“The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, ... since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted.There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.”

World Mind Firsts Language Instruments Commerce E Commerce Bartering

Author:Paul Valery

“Sun Microsystems had the right people to make Java into a first-class language, and I believe it was the Sun marketing people who rushed the thing out before it should have gotten out.”

People Should Firsts Believe Language I Believe Class Sun Should Have Marketing First Class Java

Author:Alan Kay

“Some languages are musical in themselves, so that it is pleasant to hear any one read or converse in them, even though we do not understand a word that we hear.... Others are full of growling, snarling, hissing sounds, as though wild beasts and serpents had first taught the people to speak.”

People Firsts Speak Language Sound Taught Musical Beast Pleasant Serpent Converses Wild Beasts Hissing Snarling Growling

Book:Thoughts

Source: Thoughts

“No new reader, however charitable, could open “Fifty Shades of Grey,” browse a few paragraphs, and reasonably conclude that the author was writing in her first language, or even her fourth.”

Writing Firsts Language Reader Fifty Shade Fourth Grey Paragraph Charitable Fifty Shades Shades Of Grey

Author:Anthony Lane

“The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age.”

Source: The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man

“If children had teachers for judgment and eloquence just as they have for languages, if their memory was exercised less than their energy or their natural genius, if instead of deadening their vivacity of mind we tried to elevate the free scope and impulse of their souls, what might not result from a fine disposition? As it is, we forget that courage, or love of truth and glory are the virtues that matter most in youth; and our one endeavour is to subdue our children's spirits, in order to teach them that dependence and suppleness are the first laws of success in life.”

“Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in St. Paul [Minnesota] in 1959 and it blew my mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my own language.”

Mind Firsts Language My Own Cities Spokes Mexico Minnesota Mexico City

Author:Bob Dylan

“Economic analysis is the first principle of Marxism. Professors who were genuine leftists would have challenged the entire economics-driven machinery of American academe the wasteful multidepartmental structure, the divisive pedantry of overspecialization, the cronyism and sycophancy in recruitment and promotion, the boondoggling ostentation of pointless conferences, the exploitation of graduate students and part-time teachers, the subservience of faculty to overpaid administrators, the mediocrity and folly of the ruling cliques of the Modern Language Association.”

Source: Vamps & Tramps: New Essays

“Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal.”

Firsts Persons Purpose Language Goal Community Effort Quality Planets Highest Asking Single Person Wikipedia Encyclopedia

Author:Jimmy Wales

“It's not true that you should first think up an idea for a better world and only then "put it into practice," but, rather, through the fact of your existence in the world, you create the idea or manifest it - create it, as it were, from the "material of the world," articulate it in the "language of the world."”

Thinking World Should Firsts Ideas Facts Language Existence Practice Materials Manifest

Author:Vaclav Havel

“I don't particularly care about having [my characters] talk realistically, that doesn't mean very much to me. Actually, a lot of people speak more articulately than some critics think, but before the 20th century it really didn't occur to many writers that their language had to be the language of everyday speech. When Wordsworth first considered that in poetry, it was considered very much of a shocker. And although I'm delighted to have things in ordinary speech, it's not what I'm trying to perform myself at all: I want my characters to get their ideas across, and I want them to be articulate.”

People Thinking Want Writing Trying Firsts Mean Ideas Character Care Speak Language Century Speech Ordinary Critics Everyday 20th Century Delighted Wordsworth

Author:Louis Auchincloss

“Sign language is my first language. English and Spanish are my second languages. I learned Spanish from my grandparents, sign language from my parents, and English from television.”

Firsts Language Parent Television Grandparent Sign Language

Author:Jack Jason

“The most difficult step in the study of language is the first step.”

Firsts Language Difficult Steps Study First Steps

Book:Language

Source: Language

“What does purpose mean? It means the deepest desire for our short lives to mean something. . . . To speak a language of purpose is to return to first principles and to be able to answer, in plain English, the plain questions of Why? Why should we chip in to help someone else? Why should we defer gratification? Why should we care about the long term? Why should we trust anyone who seems to be limiting our ability to do what we want?”

Want Should Firsts Mean Long Doe Helping Seems Care Able Desire Purpose Speak Language Term Ability Answers Principles Return Intention Long Term Chips Gratification Short Life Plain English

Author:Eric Liu

“Seldom can two such epoch-making events have occurred in successive years as happened then. In 1453 the Turks stormed Constantinople and finally destroyed the Greek Empire, driving out Greek scholars, who carried the knowledge of Greek language and literature to the western world; and in 1454 the first document known to us appeared from the printing press at Mainz.”

“I didn't know at first that there were two languages in Canada.I just thought that there was one way to speak to my father and another to talk to my mother.”

Knows Way Firsts Two Mother Father Speak Language One Way Canada

Author:Louis St. Laurent

“Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home.”

Source: A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti

“The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.”

“A lot of first novels are written long before they're actually put down on paper.”

Firsts Long Book Language Novel Written Paper

Book:Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2003

Source: Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2003

“The fact that all our ape cousins - chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans - can acquire signs - is powerful evidence that our hominid ancestors' first language was gestural and that the vocal version of language was a relatively recent development. My own guess is that vocal language began emerging about 200,000 years ago.”

“Jefferson found in the religion phrases of the First Amendment no vague or fuzzy language to be bent or shaped or twisted as suited any Supreme Court Justice or White House incumbent. That amendment had built a wall, with the ecclesiastical estate on one side and the civil estate on the other.”

Source: Neither King Nor Prelate: Religion and the New Nation, 1776-1826

“My dad is a minister, and my mum is a worker with the less fortunate and the disabled. They're Nigerian natives. Their first language is Yoruba, and their second language is English.”

Firsts Language Dad Workers My Dad Fortunate Ministers Mum Disabled Less Fortunate

Author:John Boyega

“Sacrifice is the first element of religion, and resolves itself in theological language into the love of God.”

Firsts Religion Language Sacrifice Elements God Love Resolve Theological

Book:Short Studies on Great Subjects

Source: Short Studies on Great Subjects

“Many people are intimidated by doctors. ... People also feel stupid when they don't understand what a doctor's talking about the first time around, so they don't ask again. And let's be honest here, people. English is not a doctor's first language.”

People Feels Firsts Asks Language Talking Honest Stupid First Time Doctors Being Honest Intimidated

Author:Erma Bombeck

“All that a university or final highest school. can do for us is still but what the first school began doing--teach us to read. We learn to read in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the books themselves. It depends on what we read, after all manner of professors have done their best for us. The true university of these days is a collection of books.”

Source: On Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History: Six Lectures, Reported, with Emendations and Additions

“If a man really has charge of his destiny at all, he should have something to say about getting born; and I only came through by a hair's-breadth. What had I to do with this momentous first step? In the language of the lawyer, I was not even a party of the second part.”

Ifs Men Should Firsts Language Born Party Steps Destiny Hair Should Have Lawyer First Steps Breadth

Book:The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

“Clarity of language is the first casualty of authoritarianism.”

Firsts Language Clarity Authoritarianism Casualties

Author:Robin Morgan

“Lying is the misuse of language. We know that. We need to remember that it works the other way round too. Even with the best intentions, language misused, language used stupidly, carelessly, brutally, language used wrongly, breeds lies, half-truths, confusion. In that sense you can say that grammar is morality. And it is in that sense that I say a writer's first duty is to use language well.”

Source: Steering the craft: exercises and discussions on story writing for the lone navigator or the mutinous crew

“The source of each accordant strain Lies deeper than the Poet's brain. First from the people's heart must spring The passions which he learns to sing; They are the wind, the harp is he, To voice their fitful melody,-- The language of their varying fate, Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,-- The talisman which holds inwrought The touchstone of the listener's thought; That penetrates each vain disguise, And brings his secret to his eyes.”

Source: The Poems

“The language of salesmanship was no doubt born with the first fashions in fig leaves in the garden of Eden. A strange concept has grown around it: if something is to be sold, inaccuracy is not immoral. Hence the art of advertisement - untruthfulness combined with repetition.”

Ifs Firsts Art Language Born Doubt Fashion Strange Concepts Garden Advertising No Doubt Repetition Immoral Eden Advertisements Garden Of Eden Figs Salesmanship Untruthfulness

Author:Freya Stark

“Sauces in cookery are like the first rudiments of grammar - the foundation of all languages.”

Firsts Language Food Foundation Cooking Culinary Grammar Sauce Cookery

Book:The Modern Housewife: Or, Ménagère. Comprising Nearly One Thousand Receipts, for the Economic and Judicious Preparation of Every Meal of the Day, and Those for the Nursery and Sick Room; and Minute Directions for Family Management in All Its Branches. Illustrated with Engravings Including the Modern Housewife's Unique Kitchen, and Magic Stove

Source: The Modern Housewife: Or, Ménagère. Comprising Nearly One Thousand Receipts, for the Economic and Judicious Preparation of Every Meal of the Day, and Those for the Nursery and Sick Room; and Minute Directions for Family Management in All Its Branches. Illustrated with Engravings Including the Modern Housewife's Unique Kitchen, and Magic Stove

“From the sons of Ith, the first of the Gael to get his death in Ireland, there came in the after time Fathadh Canaan, that got the sway over the whole world from the rising to the setting sun, and that took hostages of the streams and the birds and the languages.”

World Firsts Whole Language Sun Son Bird Whole World Setting Settings Streams Rising Ireland Hostage

Book:The Essential Lady Gregory Collection

Source: The Essential Lady Gregory Collection

“Poetry is a second translation of the soul's feeling; it must be rendered into thought, and thought must change its nebulous robe of semi-wording into definite language, before it reaches another heart. Music is a first translation of feeling, needing no second, but entering the heart direct.”

Firsts Heart Soul Feelings Language Music Is Direct Poetry Is Definite Entering Translations Robes Wording

Book:Golden Thoughts from the Life and Works of Frances Ridley Havergal ...

Source: Golden Thoughts from the Life and Works of Frances Ridley Havergal ...