Archive

Quotes

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.

—Carl Sandburg, 1959

I live by good soup, and not on fine language.

—Molière, 1672

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

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

—Voltaire, 1764

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.

—E.M. Forster, 1910

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

—Arthur Miller, 1961

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

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

—Voltaire, c. 1732

Words pay no debts.

—William Shakespeare, 1601

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

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

—Samuel Johnson, 1780

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921

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

—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946