languages Quotes

“BURN HIM, prompted the fire. The excitement of burning was simmering in her, heating her up for more action.”

“Language development, for instance, has a critical period that begins in infancy and ends between eight years and puberty. After this critical period closes, a person’s ability to learn a second language without an accent is limited. In fact, second languages learned after the critical period are not processed in the same part of the brain as is the native tongue.”

Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.

“Jurgis was confident of his ability to get work for himself, unassisted by any one. As we have said before, he was not mistaken in this. He had gone to Brown’s and stood there not more than half an hour before one of the bosses noticed his form towering above the rest, and signaled to him. The colloquy which followed was brief and to the point: ‘Speak English?’ ‘No; Lit-uanian.’ (Jurgis had studied this word carefully.) ‘Job?’ ‘Je.’ (A nod.)”

″‘I hit him, sir,’ said Jurgis. ‘Say ‘your Honor,″ said the officer, pinching his arm hard. ‘Your Honor,’ said Jurgis, obediently. ‘You tried to choke him?’ ‘Yes, sir, your Honor.’ ‘Ever been arrested before?’ ‘No, sir, your Honor.’ ‘What have you to say for yourself?’ Jurgis hesitated. What had he to say? In two years and a half he had learned to speak English for practical purposes, but these had never included the statement that some one had intimidated and seduced his wife.”

“Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication.”

“It’s easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language. Horses stay the same from the day they are born until the day they die. They are only changed by the way people treat them.”

“It’s embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.”

“And well she sang a service, with a fine Intoning through her nose, as was most seemly, And she spoke daintily in French, extremely, After the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe; French in the Paris style she did not know.”

“If any one attributes their existence to fate, because he calls the will or the power of God itself by the name of fate, let him keep his opinion, but correct his language.”

“Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.”

The more emotional they feel the less command they have of language.

“I don’t even know anymore which home I miss. Which level of home. In Guatemala City I missed the mountains. My own language is not Spanish, did you know that?”

“Once I spoke the language of the flowers, Once I understood each word the caterpillar said, Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings, And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed. Once I heard and answered all the questions of the crickets, And joined the crying of each falling dying flake of snow, Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . . How did it go? How did it go?”

“Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes—each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.”

So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.

“This was the way things had been since their childhood as neighbors growing up on Serangoon Road, mainly because, coming from a Chinese-speaking family, Carol had always felt inferior to Eleanor, who was brought up speaking English first.”

“The winter breeze still brushed against her cheek, and again she heard her name— Princess—and what had laid on her tongue since the morning of her birth now loosened.”

“Ani was eager to learn the voice of every bird that nested on the palace grounds, but the swan pond drew her return day after day. She loved to watch them swim so slowly that the water hardly rippled and watch every silent, mild movement shimmer into meaning. Soon her throat and tongue could make nearly all the sounds of the swans, and she trumpeted gleefully.”

“Eyes...They speak all languages.”

“How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.”

“There is the disadvantage of not knowing all languages,” said Conseil, “or the disadvantage of not having one universal language.”

“There remained one resource, to speak English. Perhaps they would know this almost universal language. I knew it—as well as the German language—well enough to read it fluently, but not to speak it correctly. But, anyhow, we must make ourselves understood.”

Savor language and words because no matter what anyone tells you, words and ideas have the power to change the world.

“The vast majority of human communication – whether in the form of emails, phone calls or newspaper columns – is gossip. It comes so naturally to us that it seems as if our language evolved for this very purpose.”

“It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English – up to fifty words used in correct context – no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.”

“Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.”

“Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people’s experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things. That which, in the language of religion, is called “this world” is the universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language.”

“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.”

“Tashi delek, Mandala. That’s a lucky thing.”

“Sathsariakal, Madela. Good news!”

“If you’ve got a dozen pitchers, you need to speak 12 different languages.”