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.
—Virginia Woolf, 1899Quotes
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.
—Carl Sandburg, 1959No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
—Bertrand Russell, 1961I 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.
—Orson Welles, 1953Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.
—E.M. Forster, 1910Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BCThe more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.
—Plato, c. 375 BCThe 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, 1840Language is the archives of history.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844It is a luxury to be understood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.
—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BCNewspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb, 1833