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.

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

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

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

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

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

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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. 

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.

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.

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

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.