#la

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. ↗

— George Orwell

#english-language #insincerity #english

Mister Cameron - I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me. ↗

— Mercedes Lackey

#history #humor #latin #humor

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language. ↗

— Martin Buber

#eyes #great #language #power #speak

Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there. ↗

— Bernie Mcgill

#historical-fiction #ireland #irish #literary-fiction #mother

For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God. ↗

— Alexandre Dumas

#prayer #religious #sorrow #language

What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written. ↗

— Jacques Derrida

#irony #language #speech #truth #writing

I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from a man's and for which man's language was so inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored. ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#erotica #sex #language

Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service. ↗

— Wilkie Collins

#words #language

It touched me to be trusted with something terrible. ↗

— Elizabeth Kostova

#dark #dracula #european #fiction #historian

Thank you, Simon, I appreciate that." Luke opened the pizza box and, finding it empty, shut it with a sigh. "Though you did eat all the pizza." "I only had five slices," Simon protested, leaning his chair backward so it balanced precariously on its two back legs. "How many slices did you think were in a pizza, dork?" Clary wanted to know. "Less than five slices isn't a meal. It's a snack." Simon looked apprehensively at Luke. "Does this mean you're going to wolf out and eat me?" "Certainly not." Luke rose to toss the pizza box into the trash. "You would be stringy and hard to digest." "But kosher," Simon pointed out cheerfully. "I'll be sure to point any Jewish lycanthropes your way." Luke leaned his back against the sink. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#luke #simon-lewis #balance