Language 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.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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

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.

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

Anyone who doesn’t know foreign languages knows nothing of his own.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

Language is the archives of history.

Words pay no debts.

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

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

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

I 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.