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.

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

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.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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.

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. 

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

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

Language is the archives of history.

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

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.

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.

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.