Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.
—John Camden Hotten, 1859Quotes
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.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1838Only 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, 1910No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
—Bertrand Russell, 1961Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1821It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?
—Voltaire, c. 1732I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BCThe 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.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840We 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.
—John Locke, 1690Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
—George Orwell, 1944A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
—Arthur Miller, 1961History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.
—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
—Winston Churchill, 1943