Johann Georg Hamann Quotes

I love language, and I love the failure of language.

Words build bridges into unexplored regions.

Words let us say the things we want to say and also things we would be better off not having said. They let us know the things we need to know, and also things we wish we didn't.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

I'm sorry I can't speak very coherently.

Words are the money of fools.

What is reading, but silent conversation.

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

Man can no more think without words than see without light.

As reason is the glory of man, so the lamp of reason is eloquence.

If intelligence is the triumph of life, the spoken word is the marvellous means by which this intelligence is manifested.

He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.

Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.

My words itch at your ears till you understand them

I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people.

Rhetoric is nothing but reason well dressed and argument put in order.

The key to all knowledge comes in words of just one syllable, apparently.... There's only the last page left to write on. I'll fill it with words of just one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.

Being that can be understood is language.

I had always suspected language was quite limited in its ability to communicate the intricate mysteries of truth.

I'd tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear

Language is the light of the mind

She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.

Eloquence is the child of knowledge. When a mind is full, like a wholesome river, it is also clear.

It is music that, being the universal language, has no need to learn any particular language of the world.