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Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that the colors of an autumn forest....Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them , in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.
-G. K. Chesterton
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All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.
-Noam Chomsky
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One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland --and no other.
-E. M. Cioran
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Language 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
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As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'Tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room
-Jeremy Collier
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The common faults of American language are an ambition of effect, a want of simplicity, and a turgid abuse of terms.
-James Fenimore Cooper
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And who in time knows whither we may vent the treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores this gain of our best glories shall be sent, 't unknowing Nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident may come refined with the accents that are ours?
-Samuel Daniel
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Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
-Clarence Darrow
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It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble and from babble to confusion.
-Rene Daumal
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Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and efficient instrument in thinking.
-Sir Humphrey Davy
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A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas.
-Ferdinand De Saussure
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The individual's whole experience is built upon the plan of his language.
-Henri Delacroix
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The vanishing of languages, like those of living species, is an event that has been repeated many times in history. Localized disasters such as a volcano eruptions, great floods or warfare have played a part, but in the modern era the spread of Europeans--and European diseases--has greatly accelerated the pace of destruction. Local or regional language communities may be overpowered by a dominant metropolitan language, which increases the pressure to neglect the ancestral tongue in favor of the new one and is seen as the key to prospering in the dominant culture. Children may be forbidden to use their mother tongue in the classroom, as has occurred to many groups, including the Welsh, Native Americans and Aboriginal Australians. Speakers of minority languages have been forcibly relocatedand combined with speakers of other languages, as happened when Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves. Practices such as these have made Native American languages the most imperiled of any on the earth.
The death of a language is not only a tragedy for those directly involved but also an irretrievable cultural loss for the rest of the world. Through language, each culture expresses a unique worldview. Thus, any effort to preserve linguistic variety implies a deep respect for the positive values of other cultures.
-Rodger Doyle
Scientific American, March, 1998
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Male supremacy is fused into the language, so that every sentence both heralds and affirms it.
-Andrea Dworkin
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I've always said that I learned the English I know through two sources -- Marvel Comics and Finnegans Wake.
-Umberto Eco
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There is the fear, common to all English-only speakers, that the chief purpose of foreign languages is to make fun of us. Otherwise, you know, why not just come out and say it?
-Barbara Ehrenreich
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The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.
-Albert Einstein
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Might, could, would --they are contemptible auxiliaries.
-George Eliot
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The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
-George Eliot
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I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Language is the archives of history.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The language of truth is simple.
-Euripides
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I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.
-Frantz Fanon
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Books about Language
