#language

Everyone, left to his own devices, forms an idea about what goes on in language which is very far from the truth. ↗

— Ferdinand de Saussure

#devices #everyone #far #forms #goes

It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time. ↗

— Ferdinand de Saussure

#among #carries #changes #commonest #different

After learning the language and culture of the Chinese people, these Jesuits began to establish contacts with the young intellectuals of the country. ↗

— Hu Shih

#began #chinese #chinese people #contacts #country

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

it strikes me that the writers most deeply concerned with the state of literary fiction and its biases against women could do a lot worse than trying to coin some terms of their own: to name the archetypes they wish to invert or criticise and thereby open up the discussion. If authors can be thought of as magicians in any sense, then the root of our power has always rested with words: choosing them, arranging them and – most powerfully – inventing them. Sexism won’t go away overnight, and nor will literary bias. But until then, if we’re determined to invest ourselves in bringing about those changes, it only makes sense to arm ourselves with a language that we, and not our enemies, have chosen. May 14, 2011 Blog post ↗

— Foz Meadows

#importance-of-words #language #literary-bias #writings #change

How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul. ↗

— Frances Hodgson Burnett

#communication #frances-hodgson-burnett #language #little-princess #soul

A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#language #simpicity #truth #communication

Language ... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone. ↗

— Paul Tillich

#independence #language #loneliness #pain #paradox

I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#english-language #french #time #death