I live by good soup, and not on fine language.
—Molière, 1672Quotes
Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
—George Orwell, 1944Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.
—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?
—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BCI sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
—Albert Camus, 1957History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.
—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946Language 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.
—Martin Heidegger, 1949Only 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.
—E.M. Forster, 1910Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?
—Alfred Hitchcock, 1962The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.
—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
—Jane Austen, 1818Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915