Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities. – Alfred North Whitehead
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used. – Oliver Wendell Holmes
The refined scholar sustains himself on the finest aged wines of poetry but should take time occasionally to partake of cheap-ale words. – Terri Guillemets, “Drinking Literature,” 2003
Heinrich Heine so loosened the corsets of the German language that today every little salesman can fondle her breasts. – Karl Kraus, translated from German by Harry Zohn
Language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact thing but a compromise — that which is common to you, me, and everybody. – Thomas Earnest Hulme, Speculations, 1923
I hate women because they have brought into the currency of our language such expressions as “all righty” and “yes indeedy” and hundreds of others. – James Thurber, “The Case Against Women”
The Ancient Mariner would not have taken so well if it had been called The Old Sailor. – Samuel Butler
A different language is a different vision of life. – Federico Fellini
If a language is corruptible, then a constitution written in that language is corruptible. – Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Conversation is the slowest form of human communication. – Author Unknown
Learn a new language and get a new soul. – Czech Proverb
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. – George Orwell
The language of truth is unadorned and always simple. – Marcellinus Ammianus
I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is an language I do not understand. – Sir Edward Appleton
All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggars teeth. – Antonin Artaud
Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. – Roland Barthes
All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology. – Roland Barthes
If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals dont speak, its because everythings perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection. – Jean Baudrillard
Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence. – Jean Baudrillard
No language is rude that can boast polite writers. – Aubrey Beardsley
