#language

I listen to people talking sometimes, that great river that is language, with all its undercurrents of grammar and nuance, and I wonder how we all learn so quickly to speak it, given that we begin when we are barely old enough to stand upright. I have no memory of finding it hard. Indeed, I have no memory of it at all. ↗

— Sarah Dunant

#grammar

Words, too, have genuine substance -- mass and weight and specific gravity. ↗

— Tim O'Brien

#science #words #love

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. ↗

— Lily Tomlin

#deep #his #invented #language #man

I speak the language of love. That’s right, I speak Russian. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#language-of-love #love #russian #love

It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between "literally" and "figuratively." If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening. If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means you are leaping in the air because you are very happy. If you are figuratively jumping for joy, it means you are so happy that you could jump for joy, but are saving your energy for other matters. ↗

— Lemony Snicket

#humor #language #humor

Just a month after the completion of the Declaration of Independence, at a time when he delegates might have been expected to occupy themselves with more pressing concerns -like how they were going to win the war and escape hanging- Congress quite extraordinarily found time to debate business for a motto for the new nation. (Their choice, E Pluribus Unum, "One from Many", was taken from, of all places, a recipe for salad in an early poem by Virgil.) ↗

— Bill Bryson

#humor #language #business

Love is only surpassing sweet when it is directed toward a mortal object, and the secret of this ultimate sweetness only is defined by the bitterness of death. Thus the white peoples of the world foresee a time when their land with its rivers and mountains still lies under heaven as it does today, but other people dwell there; when their language is entombed in books, and their laws and customs have lost their living power. ↗

— Franz Rosenzweig

#customs #death #europe #language #law

Actul sexual fără substratul pasiunii copleşitoare este o terfelire şi trupească şi sufletească de care trebuie să te ruşinezi în faţa oamenilor şi, mai ales a conştiinţei tale. ↗

— Liviu Rebreanu

#pasiune #romanian-language #romantic #romantic

If the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? It remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language. ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#language #change

Language is the apparel in which your thoughts parade before the public. ↗

— George Crane

#life #public #life