Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

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

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

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

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.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Language is the archives of history.

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. 

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

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

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

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.