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

The 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. 

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

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

The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

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.

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.

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

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

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

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

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