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

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.

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

What 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

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

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.