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Sayings about Language:

The English and French raise their language with metaphors, or by the pompousness of the whole phrase wear off any littleness that appears in the particular parts.: Joseph Addison

The want of vowels in our language has been the general complaint of our politest authors, who nevertheless have made these retrenchments, and consequently increased our former scarcity.: Joseph Addison

Nothing hath more dulled the wits, or taken away the will of children from learning, than care in making of Latin.: Roger Ascham

As the confusion of tongues was a mark of separation, so the being of one language is a mark of union.: Francis Bacon

In languages the tongue is more pliant to all sounds, the joints more supple to all feats of activity, in youth than afterwards.: Francis Bacon

Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.: Lord Chesterfield

The grammar of every language is merely a compilation of those general principles, or rules, agreeably to which that language is spoken.: Alexander Crombie

All languages tend to clear themselves of synonyms as intellectual culture advances, the superfluous words being taken up, and appropriated by new shades and combinations of thought evolved in the progress of society.: Dr. Quincey

Such difference there is in tongues, that the same figure which roughens one gives majesty to another.: John Dryden

The learned languages were less constrained in the quantity of every syllable, beside helps of grammatical figures for the lengthening or abbreviation of them.: John Dryden

Latin is a far more succinct language than the Italian, Spanish, French, or even than the English, which, by reason of its monosyllables, is far the most compendious of them.: John Dryden

The Latin, a most severe and compendious language, often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more.: John Dryden

Languages, like our bodies, are in a perpetual flux, and stand in need of recruits to supply those words that are continually falling through disuse.: Henry Felton

Languages of countries are lost by transmission of colonies of a different language.: Sir Matthew Hale

A language cannot be thoroughly learned by an adult without five years’ residence in the country where it is spoken; and without habits of close observation, a residence of twenty years is insufficient.: Philip Gilbert Hamerton

If one were to be worded to death, Italian is the fittest language.: James Howell

Languages are the pedigree of nations.: Dr. Samuel Johnson

Whether it be decreed by the authority of reason or the tyranny of ignorance, that, of all the candidates for literary praise, the unhappy lexicographer holds the lowest place, neither vanity nor interest incited me to inquire.: Dr. Samuel Johnson

Language most shows a man: speak that I may see thee: it springs out of the most retired and inmost parts of us.: Ben Jonson

Language being the conduit whereby men convey their knowledge, he that makes an ill use of it, though he does not corrupt the fountains of knowledge, which are in things, yet he stops the pipes.: John Locke

Languages are to be learned only by reading and talking, and not by scraps of authors got by heart.: John Locke

Particularly in learning of languages there is least occasion for posing of children.: John Locke

The learning and mastery of a tongue, being uneasy and unpleasant enough in itself, should not be cumbered with any other difficulties, as is done in this way of proceeding.: John Locke

It is fruitless pains to learn a language which one may guess by his temper he will wholly neglect as soon as an approach to manhood, setting him free from a governor, shall put him into the hands of his own inclination.: John Locke

I would have any one name to me that tongue that one can speak as he should do by the rules of grammar.: John Locke

If a gentleman be to study any language, it ought to be that of his own country.: John Locke

Men apply themselves to two or three foreign, dead, and which are called the learned, languages, and pique themselves upon their skill in them.: John Locke

The polity of some of our neighbours hath not thought it beneath the public care to promote and reward the improvement of their own language.: John Locke

No care is taken to improve young men in their own language, that they may thoroughly understand and be masters of it.: John Locke

The history of every language is inseparable from that of the people by whom it is spoken.: Col. William Mure

She ceas’d, and ere his words her fate decreed Impatient watch’d the language of his eye: There pity dwelt.: William Shenstone

In the beginning of speech there was an implicit compact, founded upon common consent, that such words, voices, or gestures should be signs whereby they would express their thoughts.: Robert South

It hath ever been the use of the conqueror to despise the language of the conquered, and to force him to learn his: so did the Romans always use, insomuch that there is no nation but is sprinkled with their language.: Edmund Spenser

The elementary qualities of … speech are tone, time, and force. But of these the principal modifications are commonly called by grammarians accent, quantity, and emphasis.: Sir John Stoddart

One cannot attempt the perfect reforming the languages of the world without rendering himself ridiculous.: Jonathan Swift

I would rather have trusted the refinement of our language, as to sound, to the judgment of the women than to half-witted poets.: Jonathan Swift

Language is an art, and a glorious one, whose influence extends over all others, and in which all science whatever must centre; but an art springing from necessity, and originally invented by artless men.: John Horne Tooke

Words are the leaves on the tree of language, of which if some fall away, a new succession takes their place.: Richard Chenevix Trench

And the love of our own language, what is it, in fact, but the love of our country expressing itself in one particular direction?: Richard Chenevix Trench

An acquaintance with the various tongues is nothing but a relief against the mischiefs which the building of Babel introduced.: Dr. Isaac Watts

Though the Jews were but a small nation, and confined to a narrow compass in the world, yet the first rise of letters and languages is truly to be ascribed to them.: Bishop John Wilkins

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