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.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

Methinks 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.

Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests. 

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

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.

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

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

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

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.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.