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.

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

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

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.

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 sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

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

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

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.

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