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Quotes

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.

—Xenocrates, c. 350 BC

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

—Dong Zhongshu, c. 120 BC

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1915

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

—Bertrand Russell, 1961

Speech is the mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

—Publilius Syrus, c. 50 BC

Words pay no debts.

—William Shakespeare, 1601

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

—Samuel Johnson, 1773

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

—Molière, 1672

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.

—Robert Burton, 1621

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.

—Samuel Johnson, 1780

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

—The Qur’an, c. 620

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.

—Jean Baudrillard, c. 1987

Slang 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, 1859