Language is the archives of history.

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

Words pay no debts.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

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. 

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.