The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

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.

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. 

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

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

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.

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

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

Words pay no debts.

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

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

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.