Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.
—Carl Sandburg, 1959Quotes
The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.
—Plato, c. 375 BCThe gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
—Winston Churchill, 1943Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb, 1833I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.
—Karl Kraus, c. 1910Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau, 1958The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.
—Galen, c. 175It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?
—Voltaire, c. 1732Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.
—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1821What 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.
—Robert Burton, 1621I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC