Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
—Jane Austen, 1818Quotes
Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau, 1958God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.
—The Qur’an, c. 620Methinks 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, 1899No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
—Bertrand Russell, 1961Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.
—Charles Lamb, 1833The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.
—Plato, c. 375 BCIt is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?
—Voltaire, c. 1732The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.
—Galen, c. 175Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.
—John Camden Hotten, 1859Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
—George Orwell, 1944I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817