Language Quotes - Page 68

The very special place that a language occupies among institutions is undeniable, but there is much more to be said-, a comparison would tend rather to bring out the differences.

My French is still good. That's a beautiful language and I'm happy to speak it.

Don't you understand that all language is dead currency? How they keep on playing shop with it all the same.

As a matter of fact, a national language which spreads beyond its own confines very quickly loses much of its original richness of content and is in no better case than a constructed language.

The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success.

JS will be a real functional language.

I'm very concerned with questions of language. This is what I think of when I think of myself as a writer: I'm someone who writes sentences and paragraphs. I think of the sentence - not only what it shares but, in a sense, what it looks like. I like to match words not only in a way that convey a meaning, possibly an indirect meaning, but even at times words that have a kind of visual correspondence.

The language of my books has shaped me as a man.

In my experience, writing a novel tends to create its own structure, its own demands, its own language, its own ending.

I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.

% of what you understand in a conversation is read through the body, not the words.

An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.

At some point in the next century the number of invented languages will probably overtake the number of surviving natural languages.

I just want the actors to put their faith in the language. Just let the words do the work.

Music is the great cheer-up in the language of all countries.

However well you know the French language you've learnt it the wrong way, not as a native speaker would. That's my problem as well.

It is as though the ancestors who made language and knew from what bestiality its use rescued them are saying to us: Beware of interfering with its purpose! For when language is seriously interfered with, when it is disjoined from truth, be it from mere incompetence or worse, from malice, horrors can descend again on mankind.

If language is intimately related to being human, then when we study language we are, to a remarkable degree, studying human nature.

I started out with machine code and assembly language.

Whenever I've been bitten, it's because I made a mistake. I either misread the dog's body language or let my guard down at the wrong time.

There's no such thing as dead languages, only dormant minds.

People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else.

Learn to feel sorry for music because, although it is the international language, it has no swear words.

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

You can't eat language but it eases thirst.