Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BCQuotes
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.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?
—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BCMethinks 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.
—Virginia Woolf, 1899The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.
—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858I 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.
—Orson Welles, 1953The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
—Winston Churchill, 1943Making 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, 1962Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.
—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BCLanguage is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915I live by good soup, and not on fine language.
—Molière, 1672Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.
—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC