Language Quotes

Language is the source of misunderstandings.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

Great literature is simply charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.

He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.

For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.

Language exerts hidden power, like a moon on the tides.

We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

Deeds, not words shall speak me.

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in a few words.

Use soft words and hard arguments.

Use soft words and hard arguments.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.

Grasp the subject, the words will follow.

Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one.

Words are the leaves of the tree of language, of which, if some fall away, a new succession takes their place.

Words are the physicians of the mind diseased.

Words have a longer life than deeds.

High thoughts must have high language.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

I understand a fury in your words,
But not the words.

No one has a finer command of language than the person who keeps his mouth shut.

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.