Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation.

Grammar is not a set of rules; it is something inherent in the language, and language cannot exist without it. It can be discovered, but not invented.

If language is intimately related to being human, then when we study language we are, to a remarkable degree, studying human nature.

The truth seems to be that they [teachers of grammar] were victims of a mighty hoax, one of those true belly-rumbling impostures which a workaday world can but seldom afford.

Amoebas, once they have themselves well pulled in two, go their ways-they practice divorce, but no remarriage.

Babies and language are the essential ingredients of civilization, and speakers of language no more know where it came from than babies know where they come from.

You and I who read and write books have very little effect upon language. We may think about it, write about it, and read about it, but it goes on without us, or in spite of us.

Language is a living thing. It must survive in men's minds and on their tongues if it survives at all.

Man can be defined, if one wishes, as a languag-ized mammal.

Quite naturally, scholars assumed that Latin grammar was not merely Latin grammar, but that it was grammar itself. They borrowed it and made the most of it.

Civilization could not exist until there was written language, because without written language no generation could bequeath to succeeding generations anything but its simpler findings.

The Devil needs a very good lawyer to prove that it is not the Satan but the people themselves who have committed so many evils!

For whose sake did you live, for whose sake did you die? Forgive me, baby, for what I didn't do.

You look at a guy like Lance Armstrong, and you have to be inspired. I sat next to Kirk Douglas the other day, and he's inspiring for fighting through his stroke

There must be something unique about man because otherwise, evidently, the ducks would be lecturing about Konrad Lorenz, and the rats would be writing papers about B. F. Skinner.

The market is like the police: of course you need it, but if it becomes the central organizing principle of your culture then you're in deep trouble.

Mind is but a poor reflection of the radiant Heart.

Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds.

The most important thing is the story. Not the script, but the story.

I didn't have a problem with rejection, because when you go into an audition, you're rejected already. There are hundreds of other actors. You're behind the eight ball when you go in there.

If you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.