Language quotes and sayings

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.  ~Carl Sandburg, New York Times, 13 February 1959

At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer.  ~Marshall Lumsden

One man's frankness is another man's vulgarity.  ~Kevin Smith

I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.  ~Jane Wagner  

It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.  ~Franklin P. Jones

In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.  ~Mark Twain

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.  ~Edward R. Murrow

If you can speak three languages you're trilingual.  If you can speak two languages you're bilingual.  If you can speak only one language you're an American.  ~Author Unknown

I like the word "indolence." It makes my laziness seem classy.  ~Bern Williams

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. ~Samuel Johnson

Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery.  ~Mark Amidon       

Any man who does not make himself proficient in at least two languages other than his own is a fool.  ~Martin H. Fischer

Our language is funny - a fat chance and slim chance are the same thing.  ~J. Gustav White

Swearing was invented as a compromise between running away and fighting.  ~Peter Finley Dunne, Mr. Dooley's Opinions, 1900

The existing phrasebooks are inadequate.  They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin your leg they don't tell you what to say.  ~Mark Twain

A different language is a different vision of life.  ~Federico Fellini

Learn a new language and get a new soul.  ~Czech Proverb