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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat.

Think of how far you've come, " Maggie said softly. "And then ask yourself how much farther you wish to go

if you think you can organize your own salvation you are magnifying the very sin that keeps you from it.

You know how on the evening news they always tell you that the stock market is up in active trading, or off in moderate trading, or trading in mixed activity, or whatever. Well, who gives a

The only thing Native Americans ever did better than the rest of us is spirituality. Of course, that's everything, isn't it?

Our imagination just needs space. It's all it needs, that moment where you just sort of stare into the distance where your brain gets to sort of somehow rise up.

I was taken in by the bravado and the sounds of Mexico... not so much the music, but the spirit.

I'm not from around these parts. I'm from a little place called England: we used to run the world before you.

I did not know that [ the Chancellor Angela Merkel is a bit frightened of dogs]. I wanted to make her happy. When I learned that she does not like dogs, I apologized, of course.