#lang

It was an American who said that while a Frenchman's truth was akin to a straight line, a Welshman's truth was more in the nature of a curve, and it is a fact that Welsh affairs are entangled always in parabola, double-meaning and implication. This makes for a web-like interest.... ↗

— Jan Morris

#wales #nature

Life is the continuing intervention of the inexplicable. ↗

— Erwin Chargaff

#essays #language-literature #nature

I believe language is infinitely malleable, a live being in our hands, which deserves our great respect and curiosity ↗

— Brian Kiteley

#respect

A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing. ↗

— Henry Hazlitt

#power-of-words #vocabulary #words #science

لا توجد أي دولة في العالم انطلقت في المجال التكنولوجي دون الاعتماد على اللغة الأم. ↗

— Mahdi Elmandjra

#science #science

She suddenly remembered studying the brain in science class- how a steel rod pierced a man's skull, and he opened his mouth to speak Portuguese, a language he'd never studied. Maybe it would be like this, now, for Josie. Maybe her native tongue, from here on in, would be a string of lies. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#lies #mouth #native-tongue #remembered #speak

So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays. ↗

— N.H. Kleinbaum

#laziness #morose #tired #very #women

Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words. ↗

— Rumi

#celaleddin #inadequacy-of-words #inner #language #mawlana

i do not say 'good-bye.' i believe that's one of the bullshittiest words ever invented. it's not like you're given the choice to say 'bad-bye' or 'awful-bye' or 'couldn't-care-less-about-you-bye.' every time you leave, it's supposed to be a good one. well, i don't believe in that. i believe against that. ↗

— David Levithan

#language #salutation #words

Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#disappointment #emotions #english #excitement #fail