Quotes & Sayings About Power Of English Language

I met people that I couldn't talk to - they didn't speak Spanish or English - but they knew my songs. That's what I love, the music has gone past where I thought it would get to. That's the power of music, how it can travel and break language barriers. — Prince Royce

We can trace the communitarian fantasy that lies at the root of all humanism back to the model of a literary society, in which participation through reading the canon reveals a common love of inspiring messages. At the heart of humanism so understood we discover a cult or club fantasy: the dream of the portentous solidarity of those who have been chosen to be allowed to read. In the ancient world - indeed, until the dawn of the modern nation-states - the power of reading actually did mean something like membership of a secret elite; linguistic knowledge once counted in many places as the provenance of sorcery. In Middle English the word 'glamour' developed out of the word 'grammar'. The person who could read would be thought easily capable of other impossibilities. — Peter Sloterdijk

The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion. — Walt Whitman

Do you still believe i public opinion? Well let me tell you public opinion is a gimmick thought up by the English and Americans, it's them who are shitting us up with this public opinion rot, of you'll excuse my language, we've never had their political system, we don't have their traditions, we don't even know what trade unions are, we're a southern people and we obey whoever shouts the loudest and gives the orders. — Tabucci, Antonio

The range and variety of Chaucer's English did much to establish English as a national language. Chaucer also contributed much to the formation of a standard English based on the dialect of the East Midlands region which was basically the dialect of London which Chaucer himself spoke. Indeed, by the end of the fourteenth century the educated language of London, bolstered by the economic power of London itself, was beginning to become the standard form of written language throughout the country, although the process was not to be completed for several centuries. The cultural, commercial, administrative and intellectual importance of the East Midlands (one of the two main universities, Cambridge, was also in this region), the agricultural richness of the region and the presence of major cities, Norwich and London, contributed much to the increasing standardisation of the dialect. — Ronald Carter

The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power. — Thomas Babington Macaulay

Anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language knows only too dearly that languages can be full of pointless irregularities that increase complexity considerably without contributing much to the ability to express ideas. English, for instance, would have losed none of its expressive power if some of its verbs leaved their irregular past tense behind and becomed regular. — Guy Deutscher

I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language - and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music. — Hunter S. Thompson

With the million or more words contained in the English language, one notorious word has been able to stand out and hold its title as the most physically demanding. Violence; a word commonly bestowed upon embellished acts of crude conflict, and physical contact. The word has never brought good feelings, or good thoughts, but rather emotions of unpleasant behavior due to the severity of its nature. Over the years, violence has evolved from a basic skirmish, to an array of things. Violence in modern day time is now being used to install fear, and to persuade innocent individuals into doing whatever the perpetrator desires, such as: personal gain, rape, and advancement of power. Every day another innocent person is being robbed, and demeaned by violent characters lurking the dark streets. Not only has violence been an ongoing epidemic, but it's only getting worse as the years go on. We see horrendously violent acts being committed every day. — Slavoj Zizek