Archive

Quotes

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

—Jane Austen, 1818

Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

—Charles Lamb, 1833

Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests. 

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817

Language is the archives of history.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

—Marcel Marceau, 1958

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. 

—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

—Molière, 1672

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

—George Orwell, 1944

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

—Plato, c. 375 BC

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

—Albert Camus, 1957

It is a luxury to be understood.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831