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

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

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

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

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.

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.

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.

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

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

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.

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.