Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo Quotes

English dialogues are always just what you need and nothing more - like something out of Hemingway. In Italian and in French, dialogues are always theatrical, literary. You can do more with it.

Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily, it's usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is 'fairy lights,' which we boringly refer to as 'Christmas lights.'

A man notices a woman's figure when she walks in a room. Women have eight million words for blue; a man says dark blue or light blue.

I see comments occasionally about the way I speak but it goes straight over my head. You speak the way you speak and it is a silly thing to judge someone on.

The very same book, even if it is translated very accurately, let's say from Hebrew into English or from English into Hebrew, becomes a different book because language is a musical instrument.

Americans do seem to say things which make the English notice England.

Goosnargh," said Ford Prefect, which was a special Betelgeusian word he used when he knew he should say something but didn't know what it should be.

When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (i.e., the verbal information I'm trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It's a function of the fact there are so many different well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. "I was attacked by a bear!" to "Goddamn bear tried to kill me!" to "That ursine juggernaut did essay to sup upon my person!" and so on.

The human language, as precise as it is with its thousands of words, can still be so wonderfully vague.

Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.

Of course, not everything is unsayable in words, only the living truth.

Language has time as its element; all other media have space as their element.

All I am is the trick of words writing themselves.

I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.

The words are easy - most of them have already been invented.

Speech is an old torn net, through which the fish escape as one casts it over them.

Profanity is merely an expression of one's emotions

If you can't give me poetry, can't you give me poetical science?

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

It's still a mystery to me exactly how I learned the language. [But] I was 19 years old and I had very urgent things to tell girls.

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.

Every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.

It was an American who said that while a Frenchman's truth was akin to a straight line, a Welshman's truth was more in the nature of a curve, and it is a fact that Welsh affairs are entangled always in parabola, double-meaning and implication. This makes for a web-like interest.

The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought