Language

Language is the term commonly used for any distinctive means of communication. There are several types of language, including , written language, and oral/aural language (spoken). The study of language is commonly called Linguistics.

Sourced

• The language denotes the man. A coarse or refined character finds its expression naturally in a coarse or refined phraseology.
  • Christian Nestell Bovee, Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume II, p. 7.

• The only thing in life is language. Not love. Not anything else.
  • Richard Burton, Welsh actor. In Bragg, Melvyn (1988). Richard Burton: A Life. Boston, Massachusetts: Little Brown and Co.. ISBN 0-316-10595-1.

• In language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned.
  • Richard Duppa (1768-1831), writer and draughtsman. Maxims No. 252 (1830).

• Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims (1876), Quotation and Originality.

• Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself.
  • Johann Georg Hamann, Sämtliche Werken, ed. Josef Nadler (1949-1957), vol. III, p. 286.

• Language is the picture and counterpart of thought.
  • Mark Hopkins, Address, Dedication of Williston Seminary, Dec. 1, 1841.

• ...a clever Toronto lawyer was deep into a technical argument before the Supreme Court. His position was dependent upon a close reading of the legal text and turned on the letter of the law. Suddenly the chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, leaned forward and asked the counsel if his argument also worked in French. After all, the law is the law in both languages and a loophole in one tends to evaporate in the other. Only an argument of substance stands up. The lawyer had no idea what to reply.
  • John Ralston Saul, A Fair Country, p. 128.

• He has strangled
  His language in his tears.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (1613), Act V, scene 1, line 158.

• Thou whoreson Zed! thou unnecessary letter!
  • William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608), Act II, scene 2, line 66.

• You taught me language; and my profit on't
  Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
  For learning me your language!
  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-1612), Act I, scene 2, line 363.

• Fie, fie upon her!
  There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
  Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
  At every joint and motive of her body.
  • William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act IV, scene 5, line 55.

• There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture.
  • William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act V, scene 2, line 12.

• Verbing weirds language.
  • Bill Watterson, Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection (1994), p. 53.

• There is no mode of action, no form of emotion, that we do not share with the lower animals. It is only by language that we rise above them, or above each other---by language, which is the parent, and not the child, of thought.
  • Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I.

• Speech is the best show a man puts on.
  • Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, thought and reality (1956), pg. 249.

• Evolution teaches us the original purpose of language was to ritualize men's threats and curses, his spells to compel the gods; communication came later.
  • Gene Wolfe, "The Death of Doctor Island", Universe 3 (1973), ed. Terry Carr; reprinted in The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 426.

• Well languag'd Danyel.
  • William Browne, Britannia's Pastorals, Book II. Song 2, line 303.

• Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company.
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Chapter X.

• And who in time knows whither we may vent
  The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores
  This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
  T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
  What worlds in th' yet unformed Occident
  May come refin'd with th' accents that are ours?
  • Samuel Daniel, Musophilus, last lines.

• Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows
  Where noun, and verb, and participle grows.
  • John Dryden, Sixth Satire of Juvenal, line 583.

• Language is fossil poetry.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays, The Poet.

• And don't confound the language of the nation
  With long-tailed words in osity and ation.
  • J. Hookham Frere, King Arthur and his Round Table, Introduction, Stanza 6.

• Language is the only instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.
  • Samuel Johnson, Preface to his English Dictionary.

• L'accent du pays où l'on est né demeure dans l'esprit et dans le cœur comme dans le langage.
  • The accent of one's country dwells in the mind and in the heart as much as in the language.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 342.

• Writ in the climate of heaven, in the language spoken by angels.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Children of the Lord's Supper, line 262.

• La grammaire, qui sait régenter jusqu'aux rois,
  Et les fait, la main haute, obéir à ses lois.
  • Grammar, which knows how to lord it over kings, and with high hands makes them obey its laws.
  • Molière, Les Femmes Savantes, II. 6.

• Une louange en grec est d'une merveilleuse efficace à la tête d'un livre.
  • A laudation in Greek is of marvellous efficacy on the title-page of a book.
  • Molière, Preface. Les Précieuses Ridicules.

• L'accent est l'âme du discours, il lui donne le sentiment et la vérité.
  • Accent is the soul of a language; it gives the feeling and truth to it.
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, I.

• Syllables govern the world.
  • John Selden, Table Talk, Power.

• Ego sum rex Romanus, et supra grammaticam.
  • I am the King of Rome, and above grammar.
  • Sigismund, at the Council of Constance (1414), to a prelate who objected to his grammar.

• Don Chaucer, well of English undefyled
  On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.
  • Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), IV. 2. 32.

• Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language.
  • Noah Webster, preface to Dictionary (Ed. of 1828).

• From purest wells of English undefiled
  None deeper drank than he, the New World's Child,
  Who in the language of their farm field spoke
  The wit and wisdom of New England folk.
  • John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell.

• Oft on the dappled turf at ease
  I sit, and play with similes,
  Loose type of things through all degrees.
  • William Wordsworth, To the Daisy.

See also

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Language

• Linguistics
• English language