The gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship.

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. 

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

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

God never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make the message clear for them.

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.

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

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.

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

Speak and speed; the close mouth catches no flies.

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

Making a film means, first of all, to tell a story. That story can be an improbable one, but it should never be banal. It must be dramatic and human. What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?

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