Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

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.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

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

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

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

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. 

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.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

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

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