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Language Quotes

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Language Quotes

“Rumors and reports of man's relation with animals are the world's oldest news stories, headlined in the stars of the zodiac, posted on the walls of prehistoric caves, inscribed in the languages of Egyptian myth, Greek philosophy, Hindu religion, Christian art, our own DNA. Belonging within the circle of mankind's intimate acquaintance ... constant albeit speechless companions, they supplied energies fit to be harnessed or roasted.”

MenWorldArtPhilosophyStoriesChristianEnergyLanguageStarsAnimalMankindWallFitNewsRelationConstantMythCirclesGreekIntimateReportsCompanionBelongingCavesDnaAcquaintanceRumorEgyptianSpeechlessReligion ChristianPrehistoricZodiacNews StoriesHindu ReligionGreek PhilosophyChristian Art
Author:Lewis H. Lapham
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“Whereas, according to the declaration of that true man of the world Talleyrand, the use of language is to conceal the thoughts; this is to declare in the present instance, when I say I am not able to bear much talking, it means really, and without any mistake, or equivocation, or oblique meaning, or implication, or subterfuge, or omission, that I am not able; being at present rather weak in the head, and able to work no more.”

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Author:Michael Faraday
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“The idea of human rights and freedoms must be an integral part of any meaningful world order. Yet, I think it must be anchored in a different place, and in a different way, than has been the case so far. If it is to be more than just a slogan mocked by half the world, it cannot be expressed in the language of a departing era, and it must not be mere froth floating on the subsiding waters of faith in a purely scientific relationship to the world.”

IfsThinkingWorldWayHumansHas BeensIdeasDifferentOrderLanguageWaterHalfCasesRightsMereHuman RightsMeaningfulErasDifferent WaysFloatingSlogansDifferent PlaceWorld OrderRights And FreedomsDeparting
Author:Vaclav Havel
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“The relationship between science and the humanities is two-way. Science changes our view of the world and our place in it. In the other direction, the humanities provide the store of ideas and images and language available to us in understanding the world. The exploding star of A.D. 1054, the Crab Nebula, was sighted and documented by the Chinese, but nowhere mentioned in the West, where the Aristotelian notion of the immortality of stars still held sway. We often do not see what we do not expect to see.”

WorldWayStillsTwoIdeasHumanityLanguageStarsUnderstandingViewsWestNotionAvailableStoresChineseImmortalityTwo WaysExplodingCrabsUnderstanding The WorldNebula
Book:Great Ideas in Physics
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“We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger - especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects.”

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Author:Eric S. Raymond
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“Language is inherently not concerned with logic. As an expression of the psychological activities of humankind, it simply follows a linear process as it seeks actualisation. Moreover, it does not obey the objective concepts of time and space that belong to the physical world. When the discussion of time and space is imported into linguistic art from scientific aims and research methods, that linguistic art is entirely reduced to trifling pseudo-philosophical issues.”

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Author:Gao Xingjian
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“You have to seduce the reader, manipulate their mind and heart, listen to the music of language. I sometimes think of prose as music, in terms of its rhythms and dynamics, the way you compress and expand the attention of a reader over a sentence, the way the tempo pushes you towards an image or sensation. We want an intense experience, so that we can forget ourselves when we enter the world of the book. When you are reading, the physical object of the book should disappear from your hands.”

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Author:Carlos Ruiz Zafon
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“Every time another tribe becomes extinct and their language dies, another way of life and another way of understanding the world disappears forever. Even if it has been painstakingly studied and recorded, a language without a people to speak - it means little. A language can only live if its people live, and if today's uncontacted tribes are to have a future, we must respect their right to choose their own way of life.”

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Author:Stephen Corry
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“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.”

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Author:Frederic G. Kenyon
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“[What I want to communicate] doesn't have a language with which I can communicate it. The things that I want to communicate are simply self-evident, emotional things. And the gifts of those things are that they bring both intellectual and emotional gifts - understanding. But I don't really have a major message that I want to bring to the world through my music. The music can tell people everything they need to know about being human beings. It's not my information, it's not mine. I didn't make it. I just discovered it.”

PeopleKnowsWorldWantNeedsHumansI CanSelfLanguageUnderstandingHuman BeingsInformationEmotionalMinesMajorsMessagesIntellectualCommunicateBeing HumanEvidentEmotional Things
Author:Jeff Buckley
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“We certainly do not forget you as soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions.”

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Author:Jane Austen
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“It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believes that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.”

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Book:Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
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“You live in a society that is shaped in every possible way by the Bible. The language you use, the laws you obey (and disobey), the founding principles of your nation, the disputes about abortion, homosexuality, adultery - these and so much else in your world are rooted in the Bible. You don't have to read it for its truth value. You should read it to understand how your world got the way it is, the way you would read the constitution or Shakespeare.”

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Author:David Plotz
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“No language can fitly express the meanness, the baseness, the brutality, with which the world has ever treated its victims of one age and boasts of the next. Dante is worshipped at that grave to which he was hurried by persecution. Milton, in his own day, was "Mr. Milton, the blind adder, that spit his venom on the king's person"; and soon after, "the mighty orb of song." These absurd transitions from hatred to apotheosis, this recognition just at the moment when it becomes a mockery, saddens all intellectual history.”

WorldPersonsMomentsAgeSongNextLanguageKingsIntellectualHatredVictimBlindGravesTreatedAbsurdRecognitionTransitionPersecutionBoastBrutalitySpitMockeryMeannessMiltonVenomBasenessOrbsApotheosisAdders
Book:Literature and life, lects
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“It's always seemed to me that black people's grace has been with what they do with language. In Lorrain, Ohio, when I was a child, I went to school with and heard the stories of Mexicans, Italians, and Greeks, and I listened. I remember their language, and a lot of it is marvelous. But when I think of things my mother or father or aunts used to say, it seems the most absolutely striking thing in the world.”

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Author:Toni Morrison
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“The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those who still believe that language is 'only words' and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.”

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Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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“The more we sink into the infirmities of age, the nearer we are to immortal youth. All people are young in the other world. That state is an eternal spring, ever fresh and flourishing. Now, to pass from midnight into noon on the sudden, to be decrepit one minute and all spirit and activity the next, must be a desirable change. To call this dying is an abuse of language.”

PeopleWorldStatesAgeYoungDeathSpiritNextLanguageMinutesDyingYouthActivityEternalSpringAbuseImmortalMidnightDesirableOther WorldsNoonFlourishingOne MinuteInfirmityDecrepit
Author:Jeremy Collier
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“Martina Navratilova is not a 'girl,' nor is Debi Thomas or Katarina Witt, and the women skaters weren't 'cute' in 1988. The problem with describing women as girls is that they never grow up and therefore can't take positions of authority in the world of sport. But the good news is that you can change language, so ultimately you can change the picture of women in sports.”

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Author:Anita DeFrantz
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“Be ever gentle with the children God has given you; watch over them constantly; reprove them earnestly, but not in anger. In the forcible language of Scripture, "Be not bitter against them." "Yes, they are good boys," I once heard a kind father say. "I talk to them very much, but do not like to beat my, children--the world will beat them." It was a beautiful thought not elegantly expressed.”

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Author:Elihu Burritt
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“The world of public discourse - political, social, diplomatic, commercial - has so corrupted language that we are rightly more suspicious of the meaning of words than we are convinced of their veracity. Language has been turned on its head.”

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Book:Writing for Your Life: Discovering the Story of Your Life's Jou
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“In I Praise My Destroyer, Diane Ackerman demonstrates once again her love for the specific language that rises from the juncture of self and the natural world, and her skillful use of that language. Whether she turns her attention to the act of eating an apricot 'the color of shame and dawn,' or to 'the omnipotence of light,' or to grief when 'All the greens of summer have blown apart,' her linking of unique images, her energetic wit and whimsy, her compassionate investment in life, always bring new pleasures and perceptions to the reader.”

WorldSelfUseLightTurnsLanguageNaturalPleasureGriefAttentionColorReaderPerceptionEatingSummerUniquePraiseShameInvestmentWitDawnCompassionateNatural WorldEnergeticSkillfulDestroyersOmnipotenceWhimsyJunctureApricots
Author:Pattiann Rogers
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“As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.”

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Author:Naomi Shihab Nye
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“I love story-writing because I can (more or less, on occasion) actually DO it. That's really the truth. I like the idea that a story is sort of a site for making cool language effects - a site for celebrating language, and, therefore, the world. And the brevity is part of the challenge. I like stories because I get them - I know how to make beauty, or something like beauty, in that mode.”

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Author:George Saunders
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“I believe the principles and techniques in this book, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, can literally change the world, but more importantly, they can change the quality of your life with your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your co-workers and everyone else you interact with. I cannot recommend it highly enough.”

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Author:Jack Canfield
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