Language is fossil poetry

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

When a given sentence has been artificially taken out of context…the features of the world that we take to be normal, and our usual expectations of our world (as far as [we may think] these are relevant to the utterance) serve as an implicit context (the default frame) determining our interpretation.

E. F. Kittay, Metaphor: Its Cognitive Force and Linguistic Structure

(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987), 55-59.

Truth, like Reality, is in one sense One. However, Reality is so rich and multifaceted that it, like white light, can only be conveyed (verbally) by an equally rich “spectrum”–diverse literary forms. While Truth may be “about” Reality (what is), we only recieve the full picture of Reality (what is) by contemplating “true” history, “true” parable, “true” song, “true” poetry. That Scripture has many literary forms is no impediment to the Truth; instead, it is the very possibility of Truth’s expression. The diversity of literary forms does not imply that Scripture contains competing kinds of Truth; it shows rather that Scripture is about various kinds of fact (i.e., historical, metaphysical, moral, etc.). A sentence or text is true if things are as it says they are, but as Aristotle observed, “Being may be said in many ways.”

- Kevin Vanhoozer

If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments.

- Wittgenstein

The shorter a word, the more meanings it has.

- Paul A. Delaney

Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings.

- W.H. Auden

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

- Robert Frost

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

- Henry Brooks Adams

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas, and not for things themselves.

- John Locke

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

- George Orwell

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Hans Hofmann, painter

So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.

- John Locke

If a homological adjective is one that is true of itself, e.g., “polysyllabic”, and a heterological adjective is one which is not true of itself, e.g., “bisyllabic”, the what about “heterological”? Is it heterological or not?

- Grelling’s Paradox

Who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue can ever be perfect, since, while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand.

- Samuel Johnson

You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.

- Ronald Searle

The living language is like a cow-path; it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay.

- E.B. White

Words differently arranged have different meanings, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect.

- Blaise Pascal

If you know only one language, you’re a prisoner, stuck in the tyranny of that one language.

- Andrew Cohen

Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand.

- Mark Abley

Great leaders are great leaders because through their command of vocabulary power and culture, they are able to make others see and feel what they see and feel. Gain this power for yourself and you will have at your service the greatest force ever put into the hand of mankind.

- Joseph G. Brin