Words pay no debts.

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

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

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.

Making 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?

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.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

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.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

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.

Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.