Language is the archives of history.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844Quotes
I live by good soup, and not on fine language.
—Molière, 1672What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.
—Robert Burton, 1621The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
—Winston Churchill, 1943Words pay no debts.
—William Shakespeare, 1601No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
—Bertrand Russell, 1961The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.
—Galen, c. 175Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?
—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BCLanguage is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915The 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, 1840When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BCMan 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.
—Tertullian, c. 217