The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
Romance languages lead to premarital sex.
TV: The Colbert Réport: 26 Apr 2006
The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.
Technology is a language. Technology is a language of artifacts. And when you have a bad thought, when you have a stupid thought, the answer to that is not to be silent. The response to a stupid thought is a wiser thought. Since technology is a language of artifacts, the response to “this technology is stupid” is to make smarter technology, not to withdraw from it.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
German, it’s basically like English. English, you know, spoken by a monster, underwater, into a walkie-talkie.
Comic: Penny-Arcade
Perhaps the reader may ask, of what consequence is it whether the author’s exact language is preserved or not, provided we have his thought? The answer is, that inaccurate quotation is a sin against truth. It may appear in any particular instance to be a trifle, but perfection consists in small things, and perfection is no trifle.
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
No writing has any real value which is not the expression of genuine thought and feeling.
The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.
Book: “The Body” by Stephen King
It is only by introducing the young to great literature, drama and music, and to the excitement of great science that we open to them the possibilities that lie within the human spirit — enable them to see visions and dream dreams.
Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.
Her profession was words and she believed in them deeply. The articulation, interpretation, appreciation and preservation of good words. Words could incite, soothe, destroy, exorcise, redeem.
Language is the amber in which a thousand precious thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved.
The reader is entertained by the journey of another, but the writer is the changer of worlds.
Proverb: “D’ni”
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.
Book: How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later
Fair speech may hide a foul heart.
Book: “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” by J.R.R. Tolkien
My class, you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
Movie: Dead Poets Society
We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, ‘O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?’ Answer. That you are here—that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?
Movie: Dead Poets Society
A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.
“A Note on [toward] Bernard Shaw”