Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
—Jane Austen, 1818Quotes
Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BCNewspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb, 1833Language 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, 1817Language is the archives of history.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau, 1958History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.
—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946The 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, 1840I live by good soup, and not on fine language.
—Molière, 1672Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
—George Orwell, 1944The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.
—Plato, c. 375 BCI 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, 1957It is a luxury to be understood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831