Archive

Quotes

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

—Molière, 1672

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.

—Virginia Woolf, 1899

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921

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.

—John Locke, 1690

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BC

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732

Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

—Alfred Hitchcock, 1962

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

—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858

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.

—Albert Camus, 1957

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

—Karl Kraus, c. 1910

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.

—Thomas Carlyle, 1838

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

—Carl Sandburg, 1959