#languages

BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#humor #languages #poison #beauty

Do you wish to speak in Provençal, French, or Latin? They are all I can manage, I'm afraid." "Any will do," the rabbi replied in Provençal. "Splendid. Latin it is," said Pope Clement. ↗

— Iain Pears

#communication #conceit #languages #mockery #papal-authority

Language by its very nature is naive,we make it complex and naughty. We make it look and sound like what it is not. ↗

— Nahiyan bin Asadullah

#nature

Different languages, the same thoughts; servant to thoughts and their masters. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#languages #literature #literature-quotes #masters #philosophy

To a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a place of many words and man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#appears #comes #languages #man #many

I speak two languages, Body and English. ↗

— Mae West

#english #i #languages #speak #two

Well, maybe so, although I don't think I am particularly gifted in languages. In fact, oddly enough, it may have something to do with my being slow at languages. ↗

— Robert Fitzgerald

#am #being #enough #fact #gifted

I wish life was not so short, he thought. languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about. ↗

— J. R. R. Tolkien

#i #i wish #know #languages #life

I spent my first two years at a small all-male college in Virginia called Hampden-Sydney. That was like going to college 120 years ago. The languages, a year of rhetoric, all of the great books, Western Man courses, stuff like that. ↗

— Stephen Colbert

#books #called #college #courses #first

Given the devaluation of literature and of the study of foreign languages per se in the United States, as well as the preponderance of theory over text in graduate literature studies, creative writing programs keep literature courses populated. ↗

— Marilyn Hacker

#creative #creative writing #creative writing programs #foreign #foreign languages