Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Words pay no debts.

The 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. 

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

Only 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.