Language
Speech and writing as the means of human communication and thought.
Works to read
- Politics and the English Language by George Orwell, 1946
- Lacon: or, Many Things in a Few Words by Charles Caleb Colton, 1820–1822
- The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, c. 431–411 BCE · Great Books
- Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg, 1958 · Great Books
- Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, 1807
- On the Choice of Books by Thomas Carlyle, 1866
- Meyer v. Nebraska by Supreme Court of the United States, 1923
- Gitlow v. New York by Supreme Court of the United States, 1925
- Cratylus by Plato, c. 380s-360s BC · Great Books
- Categories by Aristotle, c. 350 BC · Great Books
- On Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations by Aristotle, c. 350 BC · Great Books
- Rhetoric by Aristotle, c. 350-335 BC · Great Books
Passages
skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain many-sided physiological temperament, which in ordinary language is called nervous debility and sickliness
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
we cannot improve the language of any science without at the same time improving the science itself; neither can we, on the other hand, improve a science, without improving the language or nomenclature which belongs to it.
— Antoine Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry
But when the laws are written down, rich and poor alike have equal justice, and it is open to the weaker to use the same language to the prosperous when he is reviled by him, and the weaker prevails over the stronger if he have justice on his side.
— Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis and Other Plays
There are two totally distinct uses of language.
— I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism
May hear, well-pleas’d, the language of the soul
— Robert Burns, The Cotter’s Saturday Night
Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: language, words, speech, grammar. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.