Archive

Quotes

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

—Plato, c. 375 BC

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

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817

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

—Marcel Marceau, 1958

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

—Carl Sandburg, 1959

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

—Samuel Johnson, 1773

Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

—John Camden Hotten, 1859

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

—Karl Kraus, c. 1910

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

—Voltaire, 1764

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?

—Alfred Hitchcock, 1962

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

—George Orwell, 1944

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

—Charles Lamb, 1833

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

—Arthur Miller, 1961

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

—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858