As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scen.
Jacques Derrida

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

I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.
Gustave Flaubert

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
Ezra Pound

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
Ezra Pound

In general, every country has the language it deserves.
Jorge Luis Borges

Language is the dress of thought.
Samuel Johnson

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
Diane Ackerman

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.
Lynn Abbey

Take all that is given whether wealth, love or language, nothing comes by mistake and with good digestion all can be turned to health.
George Herbert

The eyes have one language everywhere.
George Herbert

I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.
Frantz Fanon

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.
Karl Kraus

Poetry is one of the destinies of speech... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.
Gaston Bachelard

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
Gaston Bachelard

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.
Stephen Fry

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
Henry James

My least favorite phrase in the English language is "I don't care."
James Caan

Lyrics have to be underwritten. That's why poets generally make poor lyric writers because the language is too rich. You get drowned in it.
Stephen Sondheim

Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations.
Jurgen Habermas