The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.
—Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 1858Quotes
Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.
—Thomas Carlyle, 1838Language is the armory of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1817Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1921My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.
—Karl Kraus, c. 1910Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
—Jane Austen, 1818I live by good soup, and not on fine language.
—Molière, 1672I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
—Albert Camus, 1957Words pay no debts.
—William Shakespeare, 1601I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
—Samuel Johnson, 1773We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.
—John Locke, 1690It is a luxury to be understood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1831In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.
—Voltaire, 1764