Country Whose Language Quotes & Sayings

I'm a Russian and all I know of Russia is what I've read. I yearn for the broad fields of golden corn and the forests of silver beech that I've read of in books and though I try and try, I can't see them with my mind's eye. I know Moscow from what I've seen of it at the cinema. I sometimes rack my brain to picture to myself a Russian village, the straggling village of log houses with their thatched roofs that you read about in Chekov, and it's no good, I know that what I see isn't that at all. I'm a Russian and I speak my native language worse than I speak English and French. When I read Tolstoi and Dostoievsky it is easier for me to read them in a translation. I'm just as much a foreigner to my own people as I am to the English and French. You who've got a home and a country, people who love you, people whose ways are your ways, whom you understand without knowing them - how can you tell what it is to belong nowhere? — W. Somerset Maugham

I think Russia is a difficult country, and it's very difficult for people to adapt here, especially if they don't speak the language well. — Maelle Gavet

I want to keep talking about my people and my country in my own language. — Nadine Labaki

Learn a language of another country and then you can go to that country: a place where the problems of your family will not follow. A language they do not speak. — Alice Sebold

Love is a country, with closed borders and a language no foreigner can speak. The only people who can understand its customs, traditions, and history are its citizens. A relationship doesn't have to make sense to all people. It only has to make sense to two people. — Jillian Keenan

The largest land animal is the elephant, and it is the nearest to man in intelligence: it understands the language of its country and obeys orders, remembers duties that it has been taught, is pleased by affection and by marks of honour, nay more it possesses virtues rare even in man, honesty, wisdom, justice, also respect for the stars and reverence for the sun and moon. — Pliny The Elder

It is said that brother Joseph in his lifetime declared that the Elders of this Church should step forth at a particular time when the Constitution should be in danger, and rescue it, and save it. This may be so; but I do not recollect that he said exactly so. I believe he [Joseph] said something like this - that the time would come when the Constitution and the country would be in danger of an overthrow; and said he, If the Constitution be saved at all, it will be by the Elders of this Church. I believe this is about the language, as nearly as I can recollect it. — Joseph Smith Jr.

Dear friends, he began, there is no timetable for happiness; it moves, I think, according to rules of its own. When I was a boy I thought I'd be happy tomorrow, as a young man I thought it would be next week; last month I thought it would be never. Today, I know it is now. Each of us, I suppose has at least one person who thinks that our manifest faults are worth ignoring; I have found mine, and am content. When we are far from home we think of home; I, who am happy today, think of those in Scotland for whom such happiness might seem elusive; may such powers as listen to what is said by people like me, in olive groves like this, grant to those who want a friendship a friend, attend to the needs of those who have little, hold the hand of those who are lonely, allow Scotland, our place, our country, to sing in the language of her choosing that song she has always wanted to sing, which is of brotherhood, which is of love. — Alexander McCall Smith

Language kills, and inflamed rhetoric of the kind that spews almost daily from the lips of Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and others running for public office in this country should be condemned. — Jay Parini

In days of doubt, in days of dreary musings on my country's fate, you alone are my comfort and support, oh great, powerful, righteous, and free Russian language! — Ivan Turgenev

3. There is a good scared and a bad scared. Try to learn the difference. The wrong kind of fear will feel like driving into a storm, stepping onto a boat and feeling it begin to sink, knowing you don't have a life jacket. If that's what you feel, something needs to change. But the right kind of fear is more like meeting a friend of a friend you've been told you would love, or visiting a new country you don't know well- you might not understand the language, but you still want to learn. Good scared means you're growing. Know the difference. 4. — Elizabeth McNamara

As a candidate, I intend to let everyone hear my message, including the many who can express their love of country in a different language. — Jeb Bush

I think it's good for anybody to learn languages. Americans are particularly limited in that way. Europeans less so ... We're beginning to have Spanish move in on English in the states because of all the people coming from Hispanic countries ... and we're beginning to learn some Spanish. And I think that's a good thing ... Only having one language is very limiting ... You get to think that's the way the human race is made; there's only one language worth speaking ... Well, this isn't good for English. — W.S. Merwin

Babies all over the world are what I like to describe as 'citizens of the world.' They can discriminate all the sounds of all languages, no matter what country we're testing and what language we're using. — Patricia K. Kuhl

By his own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men that God ever allowed upon the sea, and the language in which he told these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the crimes that he described. — Robert Louis Stevenson

The Affluent Society not only changed the way the country viewed itself, but gave new phrases to the language: Conventional wisdom, the bland leading the bland, private opulence and public squalor. — Amartya Sen

Patriotism was used to muddle the sense of morality: "Our beloved country is being attacked and we must be loyal to it; in times of crisis it is not right to criticize your leaders. It is disloyal, an act of treachery." Using jingoist language is far easier than taking responsibility for righteousness in the nation. Far easier to shout patriotic slogans than to work patriotically for justice. — Eugene H. Peterson

As the carriage bumped her bones along the dark country lanes, Martha decided that if she ever got back to her own time she would write a book called 'Travel in the Edwardian Era. It would be a short book - OUCH in capital letters followed by fifty pages of bad language. — Stephen Cole

The term cartel was virtually unknown to the American language a generation ago. Like most borrowed words, when first taken over it meant different things to different persons. Time was required to crystallize its meaning. In this country it now commonly refers to international marketing arrangements. In a companion study we have defined such a cartel as an arrangement among, or on behalf of, producers engaged in the same line of business designed to limit or eliminate competition among them. — George W. Stocking

Fiona had never learned her mother's language and she had never shown much respect for the stories that it preserved-the stories that Grant had taught and written about, and still did write about, in his working life. She referred to their heroes as "old Njal" or "old Snorri." But in the last few years she had developed an interest in the country itself and looked at travel guides. She read about William Morris's trip, and Auden's. She didn't really plan to travel there. She said the weather was too dreadful. Also-she said-there ought to be one place you thought about and knew about and maybe longed for-but never did get to see. — Alice Munro

I had an unusually large-sized head, though this was not uncommon for a baby in the Midwest. The craniums in our part of the country were designed to leave a little extra room for the brain to grow in case one day we found ourselves exposed to something we didn't understand, like a foreign language, or a salad. — Michael Moore

Musicians do not have to be believed in. We do not have to be trusted. Our Music speaks for itself without the listener having to know anything about us. Music touches people's emotions in a way that nothing else can. When people find a musician they like, they are usually fans for Life. If they like the musician and his Music, they will open up their hearts to whatever that musician has to say. It matters not what country the musician or the fan comes from. Music is a language that all understand. It goes beyond and breaks down barriers. This makes the musician very powerful, and with power comes responsibility. — Victor L. Wooten

In some countries, of course, Spanish is the language spoken in public. But for many American children whose families speak Spanish at home, it becomes a private language. They use it to keep the English-speaking world at bay. — Richard Rodriguez

Science in England is not a profession: its cultivators are scarcely recognised even as a class. Our language itself contains no single term by which their occupation can be expressed. We borrow a foreign word [Savant] from another country whose high ambition it is to advance science, and whose deeper policy, in accord with more generous feelings, gives to the intellectual labourer reward and honour, in return for services which crown the nation with imperishable renown, and ultimately enrich the human race. — Charles Babbage

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation - oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The country she had taken for granted as her own, where she had been born, whose language alone she spoke, had rejected her and despised her. — Pearl S. Buck

Normally leaving one's country is a grave step: it involves leaving the society and culture in which we have been raised,, the society and culture whose language we use in speech and thought to express and understand ourselves, our aims, goals and values; the society and culture, customs, and conventions we depend on to find our place in the social world. In large part, we affirm our society and culture, and have an intimate and inexpressible knowledge of it, even though much of it we may question, if not reject. The government's authority cannot, then be freely accepted in the sense that the bonds of society and culture, of history and social place of origin, begin so early to shape our life and are normally so strong that the right of emigration does not suffice to make accepting its authority free, politically speaking, in the way that liberty of conscience suffices to make accepting ecclesiastical authority free. — John Rawls

The heart is a foreign country whose language none of us is good at. — Jack Gilbert

She felt herself alone, lost like a stranger in some fantastic country whose language and mode of life were alike incomprehensible, surrounded by enemies in an atmosphere of suspicion and perpetually lurking, unimaginable dangers. — Anna Kavan

Was that possible? The whole notion of State Department and CIA personnel being inside a country whose language they didn't speak seemed ludicrous to Charlie. How could one government understand another - much less build a healthy, positive, long-lasting relationship - without at least being able to talk in the other's heart language? It couldn't, Charlie knew, and now Washington was about to pay the piper. — Joel C. Rosenberg

When you begin to read a poem you are entering a foreign country whose laws and language and life are a kind of translation of your own; but to accept it because its stews taste exactly like your old mother's hash, or to reject it because the owl-headed goddess of wisdom in its temple is fatter than the Statue of Liberty, is an equal mark of that want of imagination, that inaccessibility to experience, of which each of us who dies a natural death will die. — Randall Jarrell

Considerable thought was given in early Congresses to the possibility of renaming the country. From the start, many people recognized that United States of America was unsatisfactory. For one thing, it allowed of no convenient adjectival form. A citizen would have to be either a United Statesian or some other such clumsy locution, or an American, thereby arrogating to ourselves a title that belonged equally to the inhabitants of some three dozen other nations on two continents. Several alternatives to America were actively considered -Columbia, Appalachia, Alleghania, Freedonia or Fredonia (whose denizens would be called Freeds or Fredes)- but none mustered sufficient support to displace the existing name. — Bill Bryson

For example, an author whose parents fled a war but he himself was born in the country where they fled to, and that is where he went to school and college before he wrote his first book of poetry in the language of this country - he should be labeled as: "Author whose parents fled a war but he himself was born in the country where they fled to, and that is where he went to school and college before he wrote his first book of poetry in the language of this country." — Sasa Stanisic

The speech fascinated him. His ear caught the rhythm of it and he noted their idioms and worked some of them into his patter. He had found the reason behind the peculiar, drawling language of the old carny hands - it was a composite of all the sprawling regions of the country. A language which sounded Southern to Southerners, Western to Westerners. It was the talk of the soil and its drawl covered the agility of the brains that poured it out. It was a soothing, illiterate, earthy language. — William Lindsay Gresham

Literature is the voice of the age and the state; the character, energy, and resources of the country are reflected and imaged forth in the conceptions of its great minds; they are organs of the time; they speak not their own language, they scarce think their own thoughts; but under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and utter the sentiments which society inspires. — Edward Everett

What they say is, life goes on, and that is mostly true. The mail is delivered and the Christmas lights go up and the ladders get put away and you open yet another box of cereal. In time, the volume of my feelings would be turned down in gentle increments to a near quiet, and yet the record would still spin, always spin. There was a place for Rose so deeply within myself that it was another country, another world, with its own light and time and its own language. A lost world. Yet its foundations and edges were permanent-the ruins of Pompeii, the glorious remnants or the Forum. A world that endured, even as it retreated into the past. A world visited, imagined, ever waiting, yet asleep — Deb Caletti

Art - in all of its forms - is not exclusive. It does not belong to any class, cast or country. Its matchless ability to express the most basic human impulses is only strengthened by its universality. It transcends language and culture, bridges social and political chasms and nurtures a collective understanding. It engenders hope, rebuilds self-respect and restores humanity. Art is a motivator, a force of empowerment and a source of support for people of all races, nationalities, ages, economic situations and genders. It is ageless, timeless and breaks through many barriers. Art brings strength to those who lack confidence, wish for a mental escape from harsh environments or who seek to restore happiness and hope in times of great need." Artfully AWARE 5 — Artfully Aware

I would listen most particularly to the countries whose language I didn't understand, didn't know what they were singing. But being a singer myself, I could understand because of the emotion. — PJ Harvey

The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as "the environment"
that is, what surrounds us, we have already made a profound division between it an ourselves. We have given up the understanding
dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought
that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other, and so neither can be better than they other. — Wendell Berry

I think it's only in a crisis that Americans see other people. It has to be an American crisis, of course. If two countries fight that do not supply the Americans with some precious commodity, then the education of the public does not take place. But when the dictator falls, when the oil is threatened, then you turn on the television and they tell you where the country is, what the language is, how to pronounce the names of the leaders, what the religion is all about, and maybe you can cut out recipes in the newspaper of Persian dishes. — Don DeLillo

I think the best part of learning a language is that you can see the country's culture through the language. And it gives you different levels of understanding of that culture when you really try to dig in and learn it. — Mark Lippert

Every language belongs to a specific place. It can migrate, it can spread. But usually it's tied to a geographical territory, a country. Italian — Jhumpa Lahiri

Language is not so important in this country. If you want to understand one another, you do. — Laurie Fabiano

Insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there. We've all felt that. And all of us, one way or another, are insane. — Paulo Coelho

I left my country because I was forced to, and I do not think that I am going to lose my language because I live in England. — Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house. — W. Somerset Maugham

For most immigrants, moving to the new country is an act of faith. Even if you've heard stories of safety, opportunity, and prosperity, it's still a leap to remove yourself from your own language, people, and country. Your own history. What if the stories weren't true? What if you couldn't adapt? What if you weren't wanted in the new country? — Nicola Yoon

We had common interests in the beauty of the French language. We both had a tremendous love of jazz. We shared dreams of getting married and having a family, living in the country, leading an idyllic life. — David Amram

Seriously, you don't have to know English. It'd be nice, a nice little plus. We don't want miracles. You don't have to know the country's language. But just some shapes, that's all. A square. A little geometry. — David Spade

It's just incredible. When you're French, coming from a non-English language country, you don't even dream about Oscar recognition or nominations. It's just beyond the dream. It's something very, very special and unique. It's the highest recognition any filmmaker could dream of. — Michel Hazanavicius

The EU Constitution is something new in human history. Though it is not as eloquent as the French and U.S. constitutions, it is the first governing document of its kind to expand the human franchise to the level of global consciousness. The language throughout the draft constitution speaks of universalism, making it clear that its focus is not a people, or a territory, or a nation, but rather the human race and the planet we inhabit. — Jeremy Rifkin

Imagine it's 1981. You're an artist, in love with art, smitten with art history. You're also a woman, with almost no mentors to look to; art history just isn't that into you. Any woman approaching art history in the early eighties was attempting to enter an almost foreign country, a restricted and exclusionary domain that spoke a private language. — Jerry Saltz

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby - so helpless and so ridiculous. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sooner or later they will leave our country, just as many people throughout history left many countries. The railways, ships, hospitals, factories and schools will be ours and we'll speak their language without either a sense of guilt or a sense of gratitude. Once again we shall be as we were - ordinary people - and if we are lies we shall be lies of our own making. — Tayeb Salih

The Grocery Checkout Proviso: The more things you care about, the more vulnerable you are. If you are part of that epicurean minority in this country that is still offended by violations of the English language, you will be slapped in the face every time you stand in line at the market. FIFTEEN ITEMS OR LESS. Caring passionately about grammar - caring passionately about anything most of humanity doesn't care about - is like poking a giant hole in your life and letting the wind blow everything around. — Rachel Kadish

we seem to be on a constant quest to keep America a country of citizens who can only talk to one another — Kari Martindale

Try and travel alone, or - if you are married - with your spouse. It will be harder work, no one will be looking after you, but this is the only way of truly leaving your country. Group travel is just a disguised way of pretending to go abroad, where you speak your own language, obey the leader of the pack, and concern yourself more with the internal gossip of the group than with the place you are visiting. — Paulo Coelho

It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population. — Robert A. Heinlein