A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

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

Language is the archives of history.

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.

Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

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

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

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

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.