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.

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

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.

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.

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.

Language is the archives of history.

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

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

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

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

Words pay no debts.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.