Behn Aphra 1640-1689
The Rover
Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.

Browning Robert 1812-1889
‘Rabbi Ben Rzra'
Fancies that broke through language and escaped.

Charlemagne 742-814
To have another language is to possess a second soul.

Clare John 1793-1864
(attributed)
Language has not the power to speak what love indites:
The soul lies buried in the ink that writes.

Gilbert W.S. 1836-1911
Iolanthe
When you're lying awake with a dismal
headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety,
I conceive you may use any language you
choose to indulge in, without impropriety.

Goethe Johann von 1749-1832
Who does not know another language, does not know his own.

Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
A Dictionary of the English Language
Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.

Jonson Ben c.1573-1637
‘A Celebration of Charis'
And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune gives the grace,
Or the feature, or the youth;
But the language, and the truth,
With the ardour and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.

Koestler Arthur 1905-1983
Wars are not fought for territory, but for words.
Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over.

Landor Walter Savage 1775-1864
‘Death stands above me'
Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear;
Of his strange language all know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

Lawrence D.H. 1885-1930
‘When I Read Shakespeare'
When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
That such trivial people should muse and thunder
In such lovely language.

Lévi-Strauss Claude 1908-1990
La Pensée sauvage
Language is a from of human reason, and has its reasons which are unknown to man.

Lydgate John c.1370-c.1451
The Fall of Princes (of Chaucer)
Sithe off oure language he was the lodesterre.

Macaulay Baron (Thomas Babington) 1800-1859
The English Bible, a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.

Macaulay Baron (Thomas Babington) 1800-1859
"A Jacobite's Epitaph"
By those white cliffs I never more must see,
By that dear language which I spake like thee,
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.

Mayakovsky Vladimir 1893-1930
‘Conversation with Inspector of Taxes ....'
In our language rhyme is a barrel. A barrel of dynamite. The line is a fuse. The line smoulders to the end and explodes;
and the town is blown sky-high in a stanza.

Milton John 1608-1674
The ... Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth
What I have spoken, is the language of that which is not called amiss The good old Cause.

Morgenstern Christian
To me, the term ‘middle-class' connotes a safe, comfortable, middle-of-the-road policy. Above all, our language is
‘middle-class' in the middle of our road. To drive it to one side or the other or even off the road, is the noblest task of the future.

Morley Christopher 1890-1957
Thunder on the Left
Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.

Morrison Toni 1931-
We die. That may be the meaning of our lives.
But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

Murrow Edward R. 1908-1965
He [Winston Churchill] mobilized the English language and sent it into battle to steady his fellow countrymen and hearten those Europeans upon whom the long dark night of tyranny had descended.

Orwell George 1903-1950
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as if it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Orwell George 1903-1950
Shooting an Elephant
Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

PFIZER Beryl
I wonder what language truck drivers are using, now that everyone is using theirs?

Pope Alexander 1688-1744
‘An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot' (of his own father)
Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,
No language, but the language of the heart.

Sandburg Carl 1878-1967
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

Shaw George Bernard 1856-1950
(attributed)
England and America are two countries divided by a common language.

Staёl Mme de 1766-1817
(attributed, asked what she talked of with lover)
Speech happens not to be his language.

Tennyson Alfred Lord 1809-1892
In Memoriam A.H.H.
But what am I ?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.

Tillich Paul 1886-1965
Language has created the word „loneliness" to express the pain of being alone,and the word „solitude" to express the glory of being alone.

Twain Mark 1835-1910
In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Weinreich Max
A language is a dialect with its own army and navy.

Wilson Woodrow 1856-1924
The men who act stand nearer to the mass of man than the men who write; and it is in their hands that new thought gets its translation into the crude language of deeds.

Wittgenstein Ludwig 1889-1951
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Wittgenstein Ludwig 1889-1951
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Language quotes, language sayings