#language

A different language is a different vision of life. ↗

— Federico Fellini

#different language #language #life #vision

Man was first a hunter, and an artist: his early vestiges tell us that alone. But he must always have dreamed, and recognized and guessed and supposed, all the skills of the imagination. Language itself is a continuously imaginative act. Rational discourse outside our familiar territory of Greek logic sounds to our ears like the wildest imagination. The Dogon, a people of West Africa, will tell you that a white fox named Ogo frequently weaves himself a hat of string bean hulls, puts it on his impudent head, and dances in the okra to insult and infuriate God Almighty, and that there's nothing we can do about it except abide him in faith and patience. This is not folklore, or quaint custom, but as serious a matter to the Dogon as a filling station to us Americans. The imagination; that is, the way we shape and use the world, indeed the way we see the world, has geographical boundaries like islands, continents, and countries. These boundaries can be crossed. That Dogon fox and his impudent dance came to live with us, but in a different body, and to serve a different mode of the imagination. We call him Brer Rabbit. ↗

— Guy Davenport

#imagination #language #dreams

When I last went to Italy, over two years ago, I had a lot more trouble understanding the language than I used to when I lived there for a year. I used to speak very little but I could understand very well. ↗

— Marcel Carne

#could #had #i #italy #language

I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly. ↗

— John le Carre

#anything #ask #be prepared #dali #diverse

Faith is more basic than language or theology. ↗

— Sydney Carter

#faith #language #more #than #theology

The symbolic language of the crucifixion is the death of the old paradigm; resurrection is a leap into a whole new way of thinking. ↗

— Deepak Chopra

#death #into #language #leap #new

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other. ↗

— Emile M. Cioran

#does #fatherland #inhabit #inhabits #language

The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in babyhood, when no one can teach them anything! ↗

— Maria Montessori

#ever #language #learn #men #only

Between 1910 and 1950 approximately 350 lives of Jesus were published in the English language alone. ↗

— John Clayton

#approximately #between #english #english language #jesus

I still have enough faith in language to believe that if I place enough words next to each other on the page, they will start to speak with sounds of their own. ↗

— Dexter Palmer

#dream-of-perpetual-motion #english #language #the-written-word #writing