“The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language.”

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.

To break the pentameter, that was the first heaven.

There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight.

The worst mistake I made was that stupid, suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism.

A man’s hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.

Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

I did not enter into silence. Silence captured me.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet black bough.

The flavors of the peach and the apricot are not lost from generation to generation. Neither are they transmitted by book learning.

A real building is one on which the eye can light and stay lit.

Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

Artists are the antennae of the race.

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

The chief merit of language is clearness.

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing detracts so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.

I feel it is unnatural and immoral to try to teach science to children in a foreign language They will know facts, but they will miss the spirit.

Books are mute as far as sound is concerned. It follows that reading aloud is a combination of two distinct operations, of two ‘languages.’ It is something far more complex than speaking and reading taken separately by themselves.

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

I liked different etymologies, different slang that came out in different eras. Different languages. Different dialects.