Archive

Quotes

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

—Marcel Marceau, 1958

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

—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BC

Words pay no debts.

—William Shakespeare, 1601

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858

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

—Plato, c. 375 BC

It is a luxury to be understood.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831

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

—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BC

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732

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

—George Orwell, 1944

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

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1821