Linguistic Expression Quotes

Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy

Without a possibility of change in meanings human communication could not perform its present functions.

Well, I like how people talk. I like language. You know, Linda Richman spoke in Yiddish.

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.

The most evident difference springs from the important part which is played in man by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by language and other symbolically devices.

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.

Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.

The mystery lies in the use of language to express human life.

Nothing exists except through language.

I act as the tongue of you, ... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.

I think the use of language is a very important means by which this species, because of its biological nature, creates a kind of social space, to place itself in interactions with other people. It doesn't have much to do with communication in a narrow sense; that is, it doesn't involve transmission of information. There is much information transmitted but it is not the content of what is said that is transmitted.

She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half. Then a chapter. Soon, there was nothing but scraps of words littered between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this. Without words, the Führer was nothing. There would be no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or wordly tricks to make us feel better. What good were the words? She said it audibly now, to the orange-lit room. "What good are the words?

The world is MADE up of language. We can SAY that the world is composed of little demons doing calisthenics, each one the size of a pissant's eyebrow.... Or we can SAY the world is made of tiny wave mechanical packets of matter hurling through space at near the speed of light.... But notice that what we get each time are WORDS.

Speech is the index of the mind.

We never choose which words to use, for as long as they mean what they mean to mean, we don’t care if they make sense or nonsense.

Thought is not merely expressed in words, it comes into existence through them

Speech is the mark of humanity. It is the normal terminus of thought.

Those things for which we find words, are things we have already overcome.

Language is the machine of the poet.

...the reality of intelligent British speech... uses blasphemus, coital and cloacal expletives as a matter of course.

How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and illusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?

Words are tricky. Sometimes you need them to bring out the hurt festering inside. If you don't, it turns gangrenous and kills you. . . . But sometimes words can break a feeling into pieces.

Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference-the way in which we are like no other life. We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

The fact is that if you have not developed language, you simply don't have access to most of human experience, and if you don't have access to experience, then you're not going to be able to think properly.