I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates, c. 350 BCQuotes
It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?
—Voltaire, c. 1732Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.
—Martin Heidegger, 1949Methinks 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, 1899The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.
—Winston Churchill, 1943In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
—Voltaire, 1764The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.
—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858I live by good soup, and not on fine language.
—Molière, 1672Every 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, 1780Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.
—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau, 1958A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.
—Arthur Miller, 1961