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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

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

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