Mind Your Own Language Quotes

#1. Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

Steven Pinker

#2. The language of art is a 'parabolic' language, with a special openness to the universal: the 'Way of Beauty' is a way capable of leading the mind and heart to the Lord, to elevate them to the heights of God.

Pope Benedict XVI

#3. Language is an old-growth forest of the mind.

Wade Davis

#4. Sometimes I go to the beach and stand facing the wind, which I wish were icy, colder than we know it in these parts. I wish it would blow all the hackneyed words, all the insipid habits of language out of me so that I could come back with a cleansed mind, cleansed of the banalities of the same talk.

Pascal Mercier

#5. The subtleties of the mind cannot be transmitted in words, but can be seen in words.

Juefan Huihong

#6. I discovered how science is truly a universal language, one that forges new connections among individuals and opens the mind to ideas that go far beyond the classroom.

Ahmed Zewail

#7. As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'Tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room

Jeremy Collier

#8. Can I? Can I speak my mind or am I dumb inside a borrowed language, captive of bastard thoughts? What of me is mine?

Jeanette Winterson

#9. You should never employ your intellect but only that it is not essential to exercise it in order to live a humane life. Language permeates all of life, of course, and one's mind is essential to it, but that does not mean intellectuality should transcend all of life.

Talal Asad

#10. The bicameral mind with its controlling gods was evolved as a final stage of the evolution of language. And in this development lies the origin of civilization.

Julian Jaynes

#11. Math is the language of the universe. So the more equations you know, the more you can converse with the cosmos.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#12. The commerce of minds was necessarily the first commerce in the world, ... since before bartering things one must barter signs, and it is necessary therefore that signs be instituted. There is no market or exchange without language. The first instrument of all commerce is language.

Paul Valery

#13. It is only when the mirror has not spoken to Chimpanzee in a plain language that it thinks it looks more better than the Gorilla

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#14. It seems to me that the great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas,

Helen Keller

#15. Mind your language, count your words, mean what you say coz otherwise people no longer stay

Ameya Agrawal

#16. My principal failing as a writer is the lack of spontaneity; the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second thoughts, third thoughts; inability to express myself properly in any language unless I compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk.

Vladimir Nabokov

#17. Daydreaming is one of the key sources of poetry - a poem often starts as a daydream that finds its way into language - and walking seems to bring a different sort of alertness, an associative kind of thinking, a drifting state of mind.

Edward Hirsch

#18. Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

Susanne Katherina Langer

#19. When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.

James Earl Jones

#20. In Nonviolent Communication you will find an amazingly effective language for saying what's on your mind and in your heart. Like so many essential and elegant systems, it's simple on the surface, challenging to use in the heat of the moment and powerful in its results.

Vicki Robin

#21. At every moment where language can't go, that's your mind.

Bodhidharma

#22. Until writing was invented, man lived in acoustic space: boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in the world of emotion, by primordial intuition, by terror.
Speech is a social chart of this bog.

Marshall McLuhan

#23. Before you get into the mind, you have to inhabit the physicality. Body language is a great way of speaking.

Michelle Yeoh

#24. There's no doubt in my mind that 'Slam' is going to be huge. It's a film about the power of language. People are going to see this and get blown away.

Saul Williams

#25. God, I want to give You every minute of this year. I shall try to keep You in mind every moment of my waking hours ... I shall try to let You be the speaker and direct every word. I shall try to let You direct my acts. I shall try to learn Your language.

Frank C. Laubach

#26. The mind, spirit, and soul are all nonphysical realities and are not easily differentiated with language derived from sensory experience.

Deepak Chopra

#27. He speaks four letter language because his mind is small. His voice is like venom, I don't like him at all.

Rodney Crowell

#28. We read each other through our eyes, and anatomically they are an extension of our brains. When we catch someone's eye, we look into a mind.

Siri Hustvedt

#29. For, to my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing is here treated of but the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere.
(on commenting the text of Genesis 1:6)

John Calvin

#30. I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.

Edward Appleton

#31. If I program 'ware with an Anglo-Ubiq word and play it, you understand it," Scile said. "If I do the same with a word in Language, and play it to an Ariekes, I understand it, but to them it means nothing, because it's only sound, and that's not where the meaning lives. It needs a mind behind it.

China Mieville

#32. The great minds, the great works transcend all limitations of time, of language, and of race, and the scholar can never feel initiated into the company of the elect until he can approach all of life's problems from the cosmopolitan standpoint.

William Osler

#33. The mind is like a computer. It runs programs. Most of the software has been poorly written. It is written in the language of fear.

Frederick Lenz

#34. Silence is the language of the cosmos. From the smallest stone to the sun itself, they all communicate through silence, greatly rich with meaning and deep, very deep. In order to understand it, we need to have a special mind.

Anu Lal

#35. The curse of Scottish literature is the lack of a whole language, which finally means the lack of a whole mind.

Edwin Muir

#36. It's better than sex. Reading delivers on the promise that sex raises but hardly ever can fulfill -- getting larger cause you're entering another person's language, cadence, heart and mind.

Chris Kraus

#37. You learn to exploit genre for the more important things - to my mind - like story, character, image, language.

Julianna Baggott

#38. Re which, again, please keep in mind that a language is both a map of the world and its own world, with its own shadowlands and crevasses-places where statements that seem to obey all the language's rules are nevertheless impossible to deal with.

David Foster Wallace

#39. Dancing is creating a sculpture that is visible only for a moment.

Erol Ozan

#40. The utility of a language as a tool of thought increases with the range of topics it can treat, but decreases with the amount of vocabulary and the complexity of grammatical rules which the user must keep in mind. Economy of notation is therefore important.

Kenneth E. Iverson

#41. Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye.

William Gibson

#42. Without language we would have no reason, without reason no religion, and without these three essential aspects of our nature, neither mind nor bond of society.

Johann Georg Hamann

#43. Without language to give them shape, memories are just like houses with no walls. They're merely events seeking to chain themselves together into causes and effects; survival unhindered by narrative.

Sorin Suciu

#44. And of course in the long run, if there is a constant fight, the graceful is bound to be defeated and the efficient mind will win, because the world understands the language of mathematics, not of love.

Osho

#45. Is only a novel ... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

Victoria Connelly

#46. I just like the feeling of finding the right word in my mind and employing it. I get pleasure from that feeling. I prefer language to gesture. I figured other people might, too.

Aimee Bender

#47. For a woman, language spoken is an expression of what she is feeling. For a man, language spoken is an expression of what he is thinking. A woman says what is on her heart while a man says what is on his mind.

Myles Munroe

#48. My body is a holy temple.

Lailah Gifty Akita

#49. Re'lar Kvothe," he said seriously. "I am trying to wake your sleeping mind to the subtle language the world is whispering. I am trying to seduce you into understanding. I am trying to teach you." He leaned forward until his face was almost touching mine. "Quit grabbing at my tits.

Patrick Rothfuss

#50. In Zen Buddhism, "The Great Cessation" is a term that points to the abandoning of the effort to define one's self by any outer definition and to give up acts of futility. It is to let the world remain a mystery that cannot be captured by science, language, or any invention of the mind

Mike Scheidt

#51. Praise is the symbol which represents sympathy, and which the mind insensibly substitutes for its recollection and language.

James Mackintosh

#52. I speak English. I grew up speaking Bengali. This is the normal, the known, the obvious composition of who I am. Then there's Italian, this strange, other component of me that I've just created. It was a creative process just to learn the language, never mind to start expressing myself in it.

Jhumpa Lahiri

#53. So they had language, and they had fire, and they had society. And about then she found an adjustment being made in her mind, as the word creatures became the word people. These beings weren't human, but they were people, she told herself; it's not them, they're us. They

Philip Pullman

#54. DYER. No, I am not of your Mind, for the Dialogue was fitted up with too much Facility. Words must be pluckt from Obscurity and nourished with Care, improved with Art and corrected with Application. Labour and Time are the Instruments in the perfection of all Work.

Peter Ackroyd

#55. Someone handed me Mexico City Blues in St. Paul [Minnesota] in 1959 and it blew my mind. It was the first poetry that spoke my own language.

Bob Dylan

#56. Wetiko is elusive and mercurial, for whatever we say wetiko is, it isn't, in that it is always more, less, and other than what we are able to say it is in language.

Paul Levy

#57. Poetry has its own unique language which every mind translates differently according to their own personal view.

Debasish Mridha

#58. This modern interpretation of Machiavelli's landmark work is perhaps more useful for the modern reader than the original text. His dense ideas have been boiled down to their essence and presented in language that can be easily grasped by the modern mind.

Brandon Musk

#59. Learning a language is like getting inside somebody's mind.

Anonymous

#60. Our mouths were fluent in the language of each other and we moved with one mind and shared the same breath.

Michelle Hodkin

#61. We can never know more than the mind can assimilate and process, nor can we discuss any aspect of the world for which there is no language.

Padma Viswanathan

#62. What is it to know a variety of languages, but merely to have a variety of sounds express the same idea? Original thought is ore of the mind; language is but the stamp and coinage by which it is put into circulation.

Washington Irving

#63. Yet why must grammar be like a prison for the mind? Might not language be as a closet full of gowns? Of a generally similar cut, with a hole for the head and neck to pass, but filled with difference and a variety of trimmings so that we don't grow bored?

Danielle Dutton

#64. All media can muddy the mind. Language leads to literature. It also leads to dogma.

Jennifer Stone

#65. The old huntsman was a surprisingly good teacher. He didn't belabor his points, didn't talk down to us, and didn't mind questions. Even Tempi's trouble with the language didn't frustrate him. Even

Patrick Rothfuss

#66. Language for me narrates the pictures in my mind.

Temple Grandin

#67. Mind Your Language in the Presence of Patriachs

Q. When is rape not rape?
A. When it is your father or stepfather.

S. Caroline Taylor

#68. An old, old formula came to mind, from back when I was very young indeed. "I am a soldier." I said it first in the language I had spoken then, then repeated myself in Sleepy's own Dejagoran dialect. "I've been distracted before. I'm still alive.

Glen Cook

#69. We have our own language. Christianese ... We don't say 'He's out of his mind,' no, we say 'That's our youth pastor.

Tim Hawkins

#70. Mind in language are inseparable. If we violate our language we violate ourselves.

William Zinsser

#71. There are very deep and restrictive principles that determine the nature of human language and are rooted in the specific character of the human mind

Noam Chomsky

#72. In my mind, there's nothing wrong with it. I don't instinctively know what's wrong with it. There is a language of the ghetto. There is a language of the barrio. And it's not good. There is an attitude. There is a behavior. There is a mindset and we wouldn't anybody to be stuck in it.

Rush Limbaugh

#73. The theater is a kind of international language, and I like it. But I have a practical bent of mind, too. In any other field, I could make only about a tenth as much as I do acting. That's why I want to be a producer. It pays better, and you have more control.

Carolyn Jones

#74. My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc.

David Bohm

#75. I think a writer should always be surprised; and the more I write, the more it seems that the language itself, when explored with humility, is always deeper and more accurate than what the author thought he had in mind.

Ciaran Carson

#76. Let your body move. It will give voice to a language that can heal.

Gina Greenlee

#77. O admirable necessity! O powerful action! What mind can penetrate your nature? What language can express this marvel? None, to be sure. This is where human discourse turns toward the contemplation of the divine.

Leonardo Da Vinci

#78. Because you think your language is the best language? That because you were born and your parents babbled to you in this tongue, that it is the best language to speak? How small is your mind.

Jeff Wheeler

#79. Our first experience of life is primarily felt in the *body.* ... We know ourselves in the security of those who hold us and gaze upon us. It's not heard or seen or thought it's felt. That's the original knowing.

Richard Rohr

#80. Language is the dress of thought; every time you talk your mind is on parade.

Samuel Johnson

#81. Observe how every truth and every error, each a thought of someone's mind, clothes itself with societies, houses, cities, language, ceremonies, newspapers

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#82. Little children can learn anything, just as they can learn a foreign language. The mind is so absorbent then. There ought to be a real program to educate teachers who want to teach grade school children about history.

David McCullough

#83. Even when I'm just sitting at my desk, I have to get up every twenty minutes or so and walk around, walk around, walk around, and then I can go back to the page. I can't just sit there for hours at a time. Language comes out of the body as much as the mind.

Paul Auster

#84. If psychedelics are exopheromones that dissolve the dominant ego, then they are also enzymes that synergize the human imagination and empower language. They cause us to connect and reconnect the contents of the collective mind in ever more implausible, beautiful, and self-fulfilling ways.

Terence McKenna

#85. The words themselves are clean, so are the things to which they apply. But the mind drags in a filthy association, calls up some repulsive emotion. Well, then, cleanse the mind, that is the real job. It is the mind which is the Augean stables, not language.

D.H. Lawrence

#86. Language is a tool for concealing the truth. If we could read each other's minds, this would be a horror show.

George Carlin

#87. Did you know that there is no exact rhyme in the Russian language for the word 'pravda'? Ponder and weigh this insufficiency in your mind. Doesn't that just echo down the canyons of your soul?

Julian Barnes

#88. Whatever language we use use to describe healthy relationships, when we're in them, we feel nourished by them, in body as well as mind.

Sharon Salzberg

#89. To generalize is to be an idiot, said Blake. Perhaps he went too far. But to generalize is to be a finite mind. Generalities are the lenses with which our intellects have to manage.

C.S. Lewis

#90. It is within and through language that the human mind points to itself.

James N. Powell

#91. Pam replied that she was too old to worry about being cool, but in fact she did worry about it, and that's one reason it was always nice to see Bobby, who was so uncool as to inhabit - in Pam's mind - his own private condominium of coolness.

Elizabeth Strout

#92. Language is surely too small a vessel to contain these emotions of mind and body that have somehow awakened a response in the spirit.

Radclyffe Hall

#93. His jargon conceals, from him, but not from us, the deep, empty hole in his mind. He uses technological language as a substitute for technique.

Richard Mitchell

#94. Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#95. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, then it is science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively, then it is art.

Albert Einstein

#96. Age in itself gives substance - what has lasted becomes a thing worth keeping. An older poem's increasing strangeness of language is part of its beauty, in the same way that the cracks and darkening of an old painting become part of its luminosity in the viewer's mind.

Jane Hirshfield

#97. Mother Nature is always speaking. She speaks in a language understood within the peaceful mind of the sincere observer. Leopards, cobras, monkeys, rivers and trees; they all served as my teachers when I lived as a wanderer in the Himalayan foothills.

Radhanath Swami

#98. The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#99. Nas' Illmatic blew my mind when I first heard it. The poetry was done on such a high level that in a way, it validated our existence, our culture. He used the language of the street at the time and made it art. Art tends to be validating.

Erik Parker

#100. If you cross the Atlantic with an American lady you invariably fall in love with her before the journey is over. Travel with the same woman in a railway car for twelve hours, and you will have written her down in your own mind in quite other language than that of love.

Anthony Trollope