"The Language Poets are writing only about language itself. The Ashbery poets are writing only about poetry itself. That seems to me a kind of dead end."
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Language quotes
Language
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Language quotes (page 29 of 120)
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"Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back."
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"Poetry, almost by definition, calls attention to its language and form."
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"It's a writer's job to carve with language, to hew close to the bone."
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"Words have power. Use the language of leadership versus the vocabulary of a victim."
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"I'm a champion for western civilization and, yes, our English language is a big part of it. It's a carrier of freedom. Wherever the English language has gone globally, freedom went with it. Science technology has always lifted up the standard of living on average of everybody on the planet. I want more of that, not less. There are civilizations that produce very little, if any. This western civilization is a superior civilization, and we want to share it with everybody."
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"There seems to be an increasing awareness of something we Americans have known for some time - that the ten most dangerous words in the English language are "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.""
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"In contrast to the written account-which, depending on its complexity of thought, reference, and vocabulary, is pitched at a larger or smaller readership-a photograph has only one language and is destined potentially for all."
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"Language is the chief means and index of a nation's progress."
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"The young cult of sociology, needing a language, invented one. There are many dead languages, but the sociologists' is the only language that was dead at birth."
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"I do have a regard for the musicality of language that came from BBC sitcoms like 'Fawlty Towers.'"
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"I'd like to learn French well enough to write in that language."
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"I'm not a lawyer, and maybe I should have used more specific legal language."
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"Language lies outside of society because it is its foundation; but it also lies within society because that is the only place where it exists and the only place where it develops."
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"Music is indeed the Universal Language."
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"Each actor requires a different language."
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"I love language. It doesn't bother me that its effects are partial. To me that is very sanity-producing. It would be weird if the effects of language were more than partial, if your whole life existed within your texts. That would be much scarier to me than language being an inadequate tool to represent."
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"We Hindus and Mohamedans would have to blame our folly rather than the English, if we allowed them to put us asunder."
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"The canker has so eaten into the society that in many cases the only meaning of education is a knowledge of English."
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"Human language can but imperfectly describe God's ways."
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