William Hazlitt Quotes

It's what you do every time. You isolate what you know, and you create a mental image of what you're doing. Every time you speak you don't have to think about it. Words come out of your mouth based on what you know. That's the same job every time.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

First I think I was interested in the stories, and later on, I became more interested in the language itself, so the stories became almost secondary, but it was kind of a background music for my life.

I think of myself primarily as a reader, then also a writer, but that's more or less irrelevant. I think I'm a good reader, I'm a good reader in many languages, especially in English, since poetry came to me through the English language, initially through my father's love of Swinburn, of Tennyson, and also of Keats, Shelley and so on - not through my native tongue, not through Spanish. It came to me as a kind of spell. I didn't understand it, but I felt it.

Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces.

I think it'd be pretty cool to fly. Actually, I'd like to be Language Gal. My super power is that I can speak every language.

Japanese was so popular that the thinking was that if you could not master Japanese, you would not be able to become a scientist

God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit, to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes ... to gain their tongue

Being able to be dry in a second language is almost the last thing you learn.

We think of speaking as something we do naturally, without any effort. But like playing music, it requires attention and knowledge and practice.

Korean, yes, I am now fluent in Korean. I was not always. When I got to Korea, I was constantly put on TV shows not knowing what was going on. So that forced me to learn Korean so I could stop looking like an idiot.

If something interesting comes up, I would love to do something in Bangla in future, especially since I can speak Bangali fluently.

In my heart and mind, I know I can hit anybody. I'm always relaxed. It's hard to explain. It's like playing with my kids. It feels natural.

I tell ya, if I hadn't chosen the career of being a performer, I think linguistics would have been a natural area that I'd have loved - to teach it, probably, Language has always fascinated me. There's a genetic inheritance there a good language gene, which I inherited [from my mother and grandfather] and she fostered that in me as he fostered that in her.

Language is the crowning achievement of human beings, and that is something Muslims have always known and revered. We are a literate people whose miracle is a Book from an unlettered man, peace and blessings be upon him, who was the most articulate and eloquent human being who ever lived. We honor our Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in honoring language that he loved so much and used so well.

Because everyone uses language to talk, everyone thinks he can talk about language.

Language is so inherent to humanity, so necessary for even basic thinking, that stories and poetry are available to anyone who can process language.

To speak a language is to take on a world, a culture.

Usage is the best language teacher.

Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan.

I tried to learn the languages - Italian, Spanish, and German - not to successfully. Working on a European set isn't a hell of a lot different from working on an American set.

I think you always feel braver in another language.

No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.

I think the one thing humans are is language wizards.

Thinking about language, while thinking _in_ language, leads to puzzles and paradoxes.