Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.
—The Book of Changes, c. 350 BCQuotes
I live by good soup, and not on fine language.
—Molière, 1672Slang 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, 1859No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
—Bertrand Russell, 1961I 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.
—Orson Welles, 1953Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.
—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BCDo not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau, 1958Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921The 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.
—Alexis de Tocqueville, 1840Under 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, 1838Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
—George Orwell, 1944It is a luxury to be understood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831How 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