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

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

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.

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.

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

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

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

Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

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

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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