#language

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

The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore. ↗

— Stephen Fry

#french #humour #language #london #paris

From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#eloquent #language #fact

The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance. ↗

— Roland Barthes

#literature #photography #photography

They say that maths is a language. So how do I order a pizza with extra cheese in maths? ↗

— Greg Curtis

#language #maths #math

This is an odd one. You have one country in the world where a word has a deeper meaning, it can really mess with design plans. ...But we have a difficult situation here so I guess we'll be looking at putting different sound chips in the dolls heading there [Britain]. ↗

— Todd McFarlane

#dolls #england #great-britain #language #toys

No phonetic sign, except at a rudimentary, strictly speaking pre-linguistic level of vocal imitation, has any substantive relation or contiguity to that which it is conventionally and temporally held to designate. ↗

— George Steiner

#symbol #design