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

Words pay no debts.

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

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

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

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.

Unexemplary words and unfounded doctrines are avoided by the noble person. Why utter them?

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

Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment.

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. 

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

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

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.