Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

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.

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

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?

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

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.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

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.

God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

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.

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

Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.