#lang

I would say colonialism is a wonderful thing. It spread civilization to Africa. Before it they had no written language, no wheel as we know it, no schools, no hospitals, not even normal clothing. ↗

— Ian Smith

#before #civilization #clothing #colonialism #even

Language also encodes our past. We want to know who we are. To know who we are, we have to know who we used to be. Consequently, our literature, written in the past, anchors us in that past. ↗

— Andrzej Wajda

#anchors #consequently #in the past #know #language

The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution. ↗

— Byron White

#constitution #constitutional #court #deals #design

I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language. ↗

— Muriel Barbery

#language #reading #beauty

When I'm on TV, I'm often talking to a conservative host. I may have another conservative arguing with me. You've got very limited time, and you're using 'sound-bite' type language. ↗

— Juan Williams

#arguing #conservative #got #host #i

Fie, fie upon her! There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out at every joint and motive of her body. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#body #language #shakespeare #sonet #wanton

Intercourse with resuscitated wife for particular number of days, superstitious act designed to insure safe operation of household machinery. Electricity mourns the absence of the energy from (wife) within the household’s walls by stalling its flow to the outlets. As such, an improvised friction need to take the place of electricity, to goad the natural currents back to their proper levels. This is achieved with the dead wife. She must be found, revived, and then penetrated until heat fills the room, until the toaster is shooting bread onto the floor, until she is smiling beneath you with black teeth and grabbing your bottom. Then the vacuum rides by and no one is pushing it, it is on full steam. Days flip past in chunks of fake light, and the intercourse is placed in the back of the mind. But it is always there, that moving into a static-ridden corpse that once spoke familiar messages in the morning when the sun was new. ↗

— Ben Marcus

#writing #age

For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#new-year #voice #words #words

I am the eye that beholds... And I am the dreamer that paints the stars in the night sky... For I am the one they call artist, and you call Love. ↗

— Solange nicole

#artist #beauty #beauty-in-nature #dreamer-of-the-stars #love

My language limitations here are real. My vocabulary is adequate for writing notes and keeping journals but absolutely useless for an active moral life. If I really knew this language, there would surely be in my head, as there is in Webster's or the Dictionary of American Slang, that unreducible verb designed to tell a person like me what to do next. ↗

— Grace Paley

#morality #uncertainty #change