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.

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.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

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.

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

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

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

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.

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

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Language is the archives of history.

Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

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