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Language Quotes

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Language Quotes

“Music, as many people have said, is the universal language. Of course points are made which make you think about things, but ultimately it makes you feel. And that's why people remember more songs that have meant something during their life than films. They start to define periods in your life, and that's kind of the beauty of it.”

PeopleThinkingFeelsKindMadeSaidRememberFilmSongCoursesLanguagePeriodsUniversalMake You ThinkUniversal Language
Author:Scott Weiland
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“Several factors besides skill are more significant in professional writers than in most amateurs. One is love of the surface level of language: the sound of it; the taste of it on the tongue; what it can be made to do in virtuosic passages that exist only for their own sake, like cadenzas in baroque concerti. Writers in love with their tools are not unlike surgeons obsessed with their scalpels, or Arctic sled racers who sleep among their dogs even when they don't have to.”

WritingMadeLanguageSoundSleepLevelsDogTasteSkillsToolsSakeTongueSurfaceSignificantFactorsObsessedPassagesSurgeonsArcticBaroqueRacersScalpels
Book:The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain
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“Our entire being is fashioned as an instrument of praise. Just as a master violin maker designs an instrument to produce maximum aesthetic results, so God tailor-made our bodies, souls and spirits to work together in consonance to produce pleasing expressions of praise and worship. When we use body language to express praise, that which is internal becomes visible.”

MadeSoulUseBodyTogetherSpiritLanguageResultsDesignProduceExpressionMastersWorshipPraiseInstrumentsVisibleInternalsWorking TogetherMakersAestheticMaximumViolinBody LanguageTailorsPraise And WorshipConsonanceBody Soul And Spirit
Author:Lamar Boschman
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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.”

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Author:Hugo Black
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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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“America could carry on a two years' war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.”

PeopleYearsHeartMayPersonsMadeTwoWarAmericaSufferingLanguageViewsCompassionEventsObjectsTearsSorrowDrawsEarsPrejudicePropertyDeterminedRevengeStrikesArguingFollyTwo YearsResentmentEloquenceDoubtfulHardnessExpulsion
Book:THE AMERICAN CRISIS – Revolutionary Work Which Inspired the American People to Fight for Their Independence: Including
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“Once you have a handle on loving yourself, you can practice sharing that love with others. You’ve probably been taught to reserve the language of love for when you’re feeling overwhelmingly tender and passionate, and only for those who have made huge commitments to you. We recommend instead learning to recognize and acknowledge all the sweet feelings that make life worthwhile even when they don’t knock you over—and, moreover, learning to communicate those feelings to the people who inspire them.”

PeopleMadeFeelingsLanguagePracticeInspireTaughtSweetHugeCommitmentPassionateCommunicateHandleAcknowledgeWorthwhileReservesLoving YouLoving YourselfLanguage Of Love
Author:Dossie Easton
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“Television is a new, hard test of our wisdom. If we succeed in mastering the new medium it will enrich us. But it can also put our mind to sleep. We must not forget that in the past the inability to transport immediate experience and to convey it to others made the use of language necessary and thus compelled the human mind to develop concepts. For in order to describe things one must draw the general from the specific; one must select, compare, think. When communication can be achieved by pointing with the finger, however, the mouth grows silent, the writing hand stops, and the mind shrinks.”

IfsThinkingWritingMindHumansMadeHardUseHandsPastOrderLanguageGrowsSleepForgetTelevisionCommunicationSucceedDrawsMouthsConceptsTestsSilentFingersMediumsCompareHuman MindCompelledInabilityPointingShrinksSelectTransportUse Of Language
Book:Film as Art
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“The constitution of madness as a mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, affords the evidence of a broken dialogue, posits the separation as already effected, and thrusts into oblivion all those stammered, imperfect words without fixed syntax in which the exchange between madness and reason was made. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue of reason about madness, has been established only on the basis of such a silence.”

Has BeensMadeEndsReasonLanguageSilenceCenturyBrokenEvidenceBasesConstitutionMadnessIllnessSeparationMental IllnessDialogueFixedImperfectOblivionPsychiatryThrustMonologuesSyntax
Book:Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry
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“The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution.... There should be, therefore, great resistance to ... redefining the category of rights deemed to be fundamental. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily takes to itself further authority to govern the country without express constitutional authority.”

ShouldLittlesMadeCountryLawLanguageDealsRightsDesignJudgingAuthorityRootsConstitutionFundamentalsCourtResistanceVulnerableCategoriesJudiciaryConstitutional LawRedefining
Author:Byron White
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“For the flowers are great blessings. For the Lord made a Nosegay in the meadow with his disciples and preached upon the lily. For the flowers have great virtues for all senses. For the flower glorifies God and the root parries the adversary. For the flowers have their angels even the words of God's creation. For there is a language of flowers. For there is a sound reasoning upon all flowers. For flowers are peculiarly the poetry of Christ.”

MadeLanguageSoundChristLordVirtueCreationFlowerBlessingAngelRootsPlantSensesReasoningWord Of GodDiscipleAdversariesLiliesGlorifyMeadowsGod's Creation
Author:Christopher Smart
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“I write with two things in mind. I want to be right with my fellow economists. After all, I've made my life as a professional economist, so I'm careful that my economics is as it should be. But I have long felt that there's no economic proposition that can't be stated in clear, accessible language. So I try to be right with my fellow economists, but I try to have an audience of any interested, intelligent person.”

WantShouldWritingTryingMindPersonsLongMadeTwoLanguageFeltAudienceClearEconomicEconomicsIntelligentFellowsCarefulTwo ThingsEconomistPropositionsIntelligent Person
Author:John Kenneth Galbraith
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“One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.”

WellsDoeMadeSaidTwoRealityLanguageCommonWrittenObjectsPoetPerspectiveReaderHonorDemandUniqueSignificantTwo ThingsValidityPoetry By Famous PoetsUnique Perspective
Author:W. H. Auden
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“I remember one English teacher in the eighth grade, Florence Schrack, whose husband also taught at the high school. I thought what she said made sense, and she parsed sentences on the blackboard and gave me, I'd like to think, some sense of English grammar and that there is a grammar, that those commas serve a purpose and that a sentence has a logic, that you can break it down. I've tried not to forget those lessons, and to treat the English language with respect as a kind of intricate tool.”

ThinkingKindMadeSaidSchoolRememberPurposeLanguageForgetBreakTeacherTaughtLessonsHusbandHigh SchoolToolsLogicTreatsSentencesGradesGrammarEnglish LanguageIntricateFlorenceEnglish TeacherEighth GradeBlackboardEnglish Grammar
Author:John Updike
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“Of the properties of mathematics, as a language, the most peculiar one is that by playing formal games with an input mathematical text, one can get an output text which seemingly carries new knowledge. The basic examples are furnished by scientific or technological calculations: general laws plus initial conditions produce predictions, often only after time-consuming and computer-aided work. One can say that the input contains an implicit knowledge which is thereby made explicit.”

MadeLawGamesLanguageConditionsExampleProduceComputerMathematicsPropertyMathematicalCarriePlusPeculiarFormalTechnologicalPredictionsInitialsConsumingCalculationsInputExplicitOutputImplicitTime ConsumingNew Knowledge
Author:IU?. I. Manin
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“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”

LongHas BeensMadeUseEarthLanguageMassInfiniteBrilliantPoeticContinentsShellsFossilsTropesLimestone
Book:Essays and Lectures
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“I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.”

WayMadeBookTodayLyingLanguageBehindsEducationPovertyKnowledgeFieldsCollegeSpeechExperienceCopiesSpeakersYardsGrammarSplendorMasonryTilesQuarry
Book:Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“In one of the most brilliant papers in the English language Hume made it clear that what we speak of as 'causality' is nothing more than the phenomenon of repetition. When we mix sulphur with saltpeter and charcoal we always get gunpowder. This is true of every event subsumed by a causal law in other words, everything which can be called scientific knowledge. "It is custom which rules ," Hume said, and in that one sentence undermined both science and philosophy .”

MadeSaidPhilosophyLawSpeakLanguageClearEventsPaperSentencesBrilliantMade ItPhenomenonCustomsRepetitionPapersEnglish LanguageScientific KnowledgeCausalityOne SentenceGunpowderCharcoalHumeScience And Philosophy
Author:Philip K. Dick
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