Language Quotes
Quotes tagged as "language"
Showing 1-30 of 3,376
![T.S. Eliot](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1612500008i/18540._UX200_CR0,90,200,200_.jpg)
“For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.”
― Four Quartets
And next year's words await another voice.”
― Four Quartets
![Patrick Rothfuss](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1351307341i/108424._UX200_CR0,42,200,200_.jpg)
“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
― The Name of the Wind
― The Name of the Wind
![John Steinbeck](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1182118389i/585._UX200_CR0,19,200,200_.jpg)
“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
― East of Eden
― East of Eden
![Stephen Fry](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1699018403i/10917._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg)
“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”
― Moab Is My Washpot
― Moab Is My Washpot
![Gustave Flaubert](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1651461896i/1461._UX200_CR0,10,200,200_.jpg)
“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
― Madame Bovary
― Madame Bovary
![Jeffrey Eugenides](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1374107943i/1467._UY200_CR49,0,200,200_.jpg)
“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ”
― Middlesex
― Middlesex
![N.H. Kleinbaum](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1352214808i/52601._CR0,26,200,200_.jpg)
“So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.”
― Dead Poets Society
― Dead Poets Society
![David Levithan](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1426529210i/11664._UY200_CR49,0,200,200_.jpg)
“i do not say 'good-bye.' i believe that's one of the bullshittiest words ever invented. it's not like you're given the choice to say 'bad-bye' or 'awful-bye' or 'couldn't-care-less-about-you-bye.' every time you leave, it's supposed to be a good one. well, i don't believe in that. i believe against that.”
― Will Grayson, Will Grayson
― Will Grayson, Will Grayson
![J.K. Rowling](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1596216614i/1077326._UX200_CR0,15,200,200_.jpg)
“Anyone can speak Troll. All you have to do is point and grunt.”
― Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
― Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
![John Green](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1353452301i/1406384._UX200_CR0,49,200,200_.jpg)
“You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.”
― The Fault in Our Stars
― The Fault in Our Stars
![Markus Zusak](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1537240528i/11466._UY200_CR43,0,200,200_.jpg)
“The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this.”
― The Book Thief
― The Book Thief
![Jodi Picoult](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1657141143i/7128._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg)
“In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who lose a child.”
― My Sister’s Keeper
― My Sister’s Keeper
![Nelson Mandela](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1308928296i/367338._UX200_CR0,11,200,200_.jpg)
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”
―
―
![Maggie Stiefvater](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1642254510i/1330292._UX200_CR0,18,200,200_.jpg)
“It wasn't that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought.”
― The Raven King
― The Raven King
![Patrick Rothfuss](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1351307341i/108424._UX200_CR0,42,200,200_.jpg)
“Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating ... but there are other ways to understanding.”
― The Name of the Wind
― The Name of the Wind
![W.H. Auden](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1631137556i/233593._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg)
“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”
― The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Volume II: 1939-1948
― The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Volume II: 1939-1948
![James Joyce](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1615569948i/5144._UX200_CR0,31,200,200_.jpg)
“He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.”
― A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
― A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
![M.L. Rio](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1647195157i/14954351._UX200_CR0,33,200,200_.jpg)
“One thing I'm sure Colborne will never understand is that I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.”
― If We Were Villains
― If We Were Villains
![Trevor Noah](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1555600819i/15149526._UY200_CR33,0,200,200_.jpg)
“Nelson Mandela once said, 'If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.' He was so right. When you make the effort to speak someone else's language, even if it's just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, 'I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being”
― Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
― Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
![Slavoj Žižek](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1449231598i/2340358._UX200_CR0,27,200,200_.jpg)
“We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.”
― Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates
― Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates
![Stephen Fry](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1699018403i/10917._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg)
“Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot.”
―
―
![Margaret Atwood](https://cdn.statically.io/img/i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1282859073i/3472._UX200_CR0,31,200,200_.jpg)
“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.”
― Der blinde Mörder
― Der blinde Mörder
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