Oscar Wilde
Writer
"Life is too short to learn German"
German Language quotes
German Language
20 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Flora Lewis
Journalist
"Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things."
Martin Heidegger
Philosopher
"The German language speaks Being, while all the others merely speak of Being."
Mark Twain
Writer, Humorist
"Never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German."
Mark Twain
Writer, Humorist
"I don't believe there is anything in the whole earth that you can't learn in Berlin except the German language."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside german language — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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German Language quotes
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"whenever the literary german dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth."
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"In early times some sufferer had to sit up with a toothache, and he put in the time inventing the German language."
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"How charmed I am when I overhear a German word which I understand!"
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"My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it."
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"Today, for a Jew who writes in the German language, it is totally impossible to make a living. In no group do I see as much misery, disappointment, desperation and hopelessness as in Jewish writers who write in German."
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"It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them flapping around in your head same as so much drawn butter."
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"A gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years."
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"The German language is the organ among the languages."
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"Heinrich Heine so loosened the corsets of the German language that today every little salesman can fondle her breasts."
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