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.

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

Words pay no debts.

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

It is a luxury to be understood.

Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.

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

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

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.

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

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

Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary and ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.