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. 

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

Language is the archives of history.

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

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

Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.

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

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

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.

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.

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

Words pay no debts.