Archive

Quotes

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

—Voltaire, c. 1732

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

—Benjamin Franklin, c. 1732

Language is the archives of history.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844

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

It is a luxury to be understood.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831

Words pay no debts.

—William Shakespeare, 1601

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

—Carl Sandburg, 1959

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

—Theodor Adorno, c. 1946

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

—Charles Lamb, 1833

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

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

—Bertrand Russell, 1961

Man is the one name belonging to every nation upon earth: there is one soul and many tongues, one spirit and various sounds; every country has its own speech, but the subjects of speech are common to all.

—Tertullian, c. 217