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

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

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

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

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

Words pay no debts.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.