Quotes for English Learners
Quotes about language
These are English quotes arranged according to different categories. You can also browse quotes according to their date of submission or by most famous authors
Quotes arranged in categories / Quotes about language
This is a list of quotes about language
A cracked kettle
Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.
Gustave Flaubert
A riotA riot is the language of the unheard.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
A scholarA scholar is like a book written in a dead language. It is not every one that can read in it.
William Hazlitt
AnimationAnimation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature. Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon's unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.
Walt Disney
Before speakingFirst learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
Epictetus
Before you can utter oraclesThe language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.
Henry David Thoreau
But what you areUse what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
ComprehensibleMost of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
Albert Einstein
Destruction of wordsIt's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.
George Orwell
England and AmericaEngland and America are two countries separated by the same language.
George Bernard Shaw
In making a speechIn making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.
Aristotle
It creates feelingsPoetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.
Umberto Eco
It goes to his heartIf you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
Nelson Mandela
It is wineLanguage is wine upon the lips.
Virginia Woolf
KindnessKindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Mark Twain
ListeningWe have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
Epictetus
Ordinary languageI remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.
Bertrand Russell
PicturesOf all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
Walt Disney
Political chaosPolitical chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.
George Orwell
Political languagePolitical language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell
SarcasmSarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.
Thomas Carlyle
Saying nothingThe finest command of language is often shown by saying nothing.
Roger Babson
Terrifying wordsThe most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
Ronald Reagan
The enemyThe great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
George Orwell
The English languageViewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.
Walt Whitman
The finest languageThe finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
George Eliot
The handicapI have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
Gustave Flaubert
The joint creationLanguage ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
George Orwell
The language of natureIt is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.
Vincent Van Gogh
Thought and languageBut if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
George Orwell
Veiling its deformity...good deeds can be shortly stated but where wrong is done a wealth of language is needed to veil its deformity.
Thucydides
Virtue of languageThe chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.
Hippocrates
Words have no powerWords have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Edgar Allan Poe