Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

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

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. 

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

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

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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