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

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.

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

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

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.

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

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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