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

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. 

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.

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.

Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

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

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests. 

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

How 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.

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