Language Structure Quotes

“In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

“What fascinated me about English was what I later recognized as its hybrid etymoogy: blunt Anglo-Saxon concreteness, sleek Norman French urbanity, and polysyllabic Greco-Roman abstraction. The clash of these elements, as competitive as Italian dialects is invigorating, richly entertaining, and often funny, as it is to Shaskespeare, who gets tremendous effects out of their interplay. The dazzling multiplicity of sounds and word choices in English makes it brilliantly suited to be a language of poetry..”
― Camille Paglia, Break, Blow, Burn

“You have already achieved the English-Language poet's most important goal: you can read, Write and speak English well enough to understand this sentence.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

“Their mutual gravitational attraction will ultimately cause them to collapse inward, in manifest disagreement with an apparently static universe.”
― Lawrence M. Krauss

“The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature. Though it may be allied to some of the elements in the appreciation of verse, it does not need any poets, other than the nameless artists who composed the language. It can be strongly felt in the simple contemplation of a vocabulary, or even in a string of names.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

“The first thing we should do in order to grasp the realm of time travel is by redefining
general perception and common concepts regarding time within our daily language structure.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“Of all the languages that have existed upon the Earth, the Hebrew language is unique and extraordinary in its ability to paint vivid pictures with words that lodge within the heart conveying deep and profound Truth".

~R. Alan Woods [2012]”
― R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is The Destination: A Photo Journal

“Ultimate meaning is meaningless. Meaning meaning means everything else.”
― Brian Spellman, Cartoonist's Book Camp