Archive

Quotes

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BC

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.

—John Camden Hotten, 1859

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

—Voltaire, c. 1732

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

—The Qur’an, c. 620

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

—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946

Language is the archives of history.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

—George Orwell, 1944

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.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1843

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.

—Thomas Carlyle, 1838

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.

—Virginia Woolf, 1899

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921

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.

—Robert Burton, 1621