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.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

What a glut of books! Who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

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

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

Language is the archives of history.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

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

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

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

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.