Language Quotes - Page 54

To write about history or language is supposed to be within the reach of every man. To write about natural science is allowed to be within the reach only of those who have mastered the subjects on which they write.

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.

To speak of atrocious crime in mild language is treason to virtue.

Every Englishman is an average Englishman: it is a national characteristic.

Most Englishmen are convinced that God is an Englishman, probably educated at Eton.

Fashions are not fashions at all but refashioning; language is not communication but reinvention. They are never in place but on display.

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

I had a quick ear and could pick up languages.

Poetry reminds us of the truths about life and human nature that we knew all along, but forgot somehow because they weren't yet in memorable language.

Metaphor is embodied in language.

Appropriation was the language of my generation in many ways. It came out of Duchamp, Warhol, Johns, Lichtenstein.

It probably helps that my background is in the sciences and I can speak the scientists' language.

Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.

The contrived language and the flattering attitude rarely come with the virtue.

There's a whole language out there, and one's role as a writer is to stumble around in it.

As our dreams make evident, the psyche's own language is that of image, and not idea.

The only love language is 'die to self.'

Often I am struck in amazement about a word: I suddenly realize that the complete arbitrariness of our language is but a part of the arbitrariness of our own world in general.

Grammar is not a set of rules; it is something inherent in the language, and language cannot exist without it. It can be discovered, but not invented.

XML is not a language in the sense of a programming language any more than sketches on a napkin are a language.

A language, like a species, when extinct, never... reappears.

Language is something you inherit, it's never just you doing the talking, which helps when you're pretending.

Of course language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience.

I find languages that support just one programming paradigm constraining

Good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language.