#lang

In the end idealism annoyed Bouvard. ‘I don’t want any more of it: the famous cogito is a bore. The ideas of things are taken for the things themselves. What we barely understand is explained by means of words that we do not understand at all! Substance, extension, force, matter and soul, are all so many abstractions, figments of the imagination. As for God, it is impossible to know how he is, or even if he is! Once he was the cause of wind, thunder, revolutions. Now he is getting smaller. Besides, I don’t see what use he is. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#god #idealism #language #religion #spirituality

I remember thinking how easy it is to speak in clichés, to steal a line from pulp fiction and let it fall. We can only hover around the inexpressible with our words anyway, and there is comfort in saying what we have heard before. ↗

— Siri Hustvedt

#language #love #love

Love and translation look alike in their grammar. To love someone implies transforming their words into ours. Making an effort to understand the other person and, inevitably, to misinterpret them. To construct a precarious language together. ↗

— Andrés Neuman

#language #love #lovers #relationships #translation

My name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#language #name #the-two-towers #tolkien #love

Il s’était tant de fois entendu dire ces choses, qu’elles n’avaient pour lui rien d’original. Emma ressemblait à toutes les maîtresses ; et le charme de la nouveauté, peu à peu tombant comme un vêtement, laissait voir à nu l’éternelle monotonie de la passion, qui a toujours les mêmes formes et le même langage. Il ne distinguait pas, cet homme si plein de pratique, la dissemblance des sentiments sous la parité des expressions. Parce que des lèvres libertines ou vénales lui avaient murmuré des phrases pareilles, il ne croyait que faiblement à la candeur de celles-là ; on en devait rabattre, pensait-il, les discours exagérés cachant les affections médiocres ; comme si la plénitude de l’âme ne débordait pas quelquefois par les métaphores les plus vides, puisque personne, jamais, ne peut donner l’exacte mesure de ses besoins, ni de ses conceptions, ni de ses douleurs, et que la parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des mélodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#love #madame-bovary #love

I wish I didn’t need words to speak to her. They sometimes hold very different meanings for us both. ↗

— Darnell Lamont Walker

#love #words #love

Dr. Jacobus, I am walking out your doors right now. I need clothes. I am going to Vatican City. One does not go to Vatican City with ones ass hanging out. Do I make myself clear? ↗

— Dan Brown

#robert-langdon #vatican-city #humor

What's a flange?" asked Marcia. A what?" A flange. It says here attatch piece Y to the long, upright D, taking care to align holes P and Q with the corrosponding holes N and O in the left-hand flange. I can't see a wrethed flange anywhere. ↗

— Angie Sage

#humor #humor

Joke exchanges are carried on in deadly earnest, like a verbal duel-mouth-to-mouth combat. Bang, bang: you’re (linguistically) dead. ↗

— David Crystal

#jokes #language-play #humor

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.' But eating too many, is quite enough-plenty. And you'll have to go see the good doc anyway. ↗

— Solange nicole

#humor #life-lessons #philosophy #solange #funny