Karl Kraus Quotes

Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye.

We think only through the medium of words. Languages are true analytical methods. Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.

Words build bridges into unexplored regions.

Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.

Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

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.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, so they use them with care, with thought, with delight.

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

I know a lot about words. I get paid to write stories, so I get to talk with people about the meaning behind words all day.

The listener is the midwife in the difficult birth of the word.

That language is an instrument of human reason, and not merely a medium for the expression of thought, is a truth generally admitted.

For me, language is something that I've always loved. When I read, that's what I look for. When I write, that's what I strive for.

Words are tools of imagery in motion.

Being that can be understood is language.

Speech is but the incorporation of thought.

Language is the light of the mind

Metaphor lives a secret life all around us. We utter about six metaphors a minute. Metaphorical thinking is essential to how we understand ourselves and others, how we communicate and learn, discover and invent.

Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff

Words are the mind's wings, are they not?

I remember thinking how easy it is to speak in clichés, to steal a line from pulp fiction and let it fall. We can only hover around the inexpressible with our words anyway, and there is comfort in saying what we have heard before.

Thinking cannot be clear until it has had expression-we must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds, which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flowers. So it is with all the inward feelings; expression gives them development-thought is the blossom; language is the opening bud; action the fruit behind it.

Find something you like, go into a room, close the door and read it aloud. Read it aloud. Everybody in the world who likes dance can see dance, or hear music, or see art, or admire architecture - but everybody in the world uses words who is not a recluse or mute. But the writer has to take these most common things, more common than musical notes or dance positions, a writer has to take some adverbs, and verbs and nouns and ball them up together and make them bounce.