This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Truth, not in distinct and clear-cut definitions but in the limpid obscurity of a single intuition that unites all dogmas in one simple Light, shining into the soul directly from God’s eternity, without the medium of created concept, without the intervention of symbols or of language or the likeness of material things. Here the Truth is One Whom we not only know and possess but by Whom we are known and possessed. Here theology ceases to be a body of abstractions and becomes a Living Reality Who is God Himself." - Thomas Merton
"In all ages, literature aims at the interpretation of the universe and a deep perception of humanity by means of language." - Yukio Mishima
"A linear medium cannot represent the simultaneity of processing that goes on in the brain – the mixture of language and image, the intimation of diverging possibilities that we experience as free will. It cannot capture the secrets of organization by which the inanimate somehow comes to life, by which the neural passageway becomes the thought." - Janet H. Murray
"The accumulated research pertaining to the accuracy of our memories and beliefs can be summarized as follows: All memories and beliefs are subject to change and distortion. Conscious beliefs and memory recall are highly dependent on language, emotion, and social interaction; as these variables change, so do our memories and beliefs. Children’s memories and beliefs distinguish poorly between fantasies and facts. The older a memory, the more difficult it is to ascertain accuracy." - Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
"Children seem to learn to talk by inventing their own words and rules: by experimenting with language. Children make statements to adults and then wait for adults to put the statements into adult language so they can make a comparison… If the adult says nothing or simply continues the conversation, the child assumes his or her utterance is correct. When adults “correct” – that is, expand in adult language what the children have said – they are providing feedback. The adult and the child are actually speaking different languages, but they understand the situation, the child can compare their different ways of saying the same thing." - Judith M. Newman
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in the grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make sense." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
"We know of four different languages today where there is not a negative word in the language, there is not a word in the past tense, or a word in the future; tense. All is here and now. Negative words, feelings, conditions have absolutely no power except what we individually give to them. The moment we cease feeding our energy into them they no longer have life, and thus they cease to exist." - Baird T. Spalding
"Don’t judge. Just hear what the person has to say. Thoughtfully consider its meaning for him. When you attend to another’s speech in this way, you may come to recognize the miracle of words. This is sacred listening. To such an ear, story, in all of its forms, is transformed into a melodious language. When the listener is this receptive, both he and the teller are elevated to a new realm of communication. This is the foundation of building trust and safety in any relationship." - Richard “Rick” Stone
"Truth is the aristocracy of language." - Synesius, aka Synesius of Cyrene NULL
"The goal of all religions is the same, but the language of the teachers differs. The goal is to kill the false “I” so that the real “I,” the Lord, will reign." - Vivekananda, fully Sri or Swami Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta NULL
"Petition and complaint are the language of imbecility and cowardice – the evidences of that puerile fear which extinguishes the soul." - Albery Allson Whitman
"The most distinctive qualities of the human species are extremely high intelligence, language, culture, and reliance on long-term social contracts. In combination they gave early Homo sapiens a decisive edge of all competing animal species, but they also exacted a price we continue to pay, composed of the shocking recognition of the self, of the finiteness of personal existence, and the chaos of the environment." -
"Our language is primarily for expressing human goodness and beauty." - Kawabata Yasunari
"The modern era, dedicated to repeatable experimental data, buried something valuable that cannot be resurrected by scientific language: namely, the qualities of knowing that rely on unification between an observer and the object observed." - Helen Palmer
"It is safe to assume that the actions of our ancestors were guided by gratitude, obligation, retribution, and indignation before they developed enough language capacity for moral discourse." - Frans de Waal, fully Franciscus Bernardus Maria "Frans" de Waal
"Language is power… Language can be used as a means of changing reality." - Adrienne Rich, fully Adrienne Cecil Rich
"Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things." -
"Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things." -
"Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things." -
"Symbols are deeper than words; speak when words become silent; gain where words lose in meaning; and so in hours of holiest worship the Church teaches, by symbols, truth language may not utter." - Andrew Martin Fairbairn
"Our very psychology has been shaken to its foundation. To grasp the meaning of the world today we use a language created to express the world of yesterday. The life of the past seems to us nearer our true nature, but only for the reason that it is nearer our language." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"The only living language is the language in which we think and have our being." - Antonio Machado, fully Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz
"Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over." - Arthur Koestler
"True creativity often starts where language ends." - Arthur Koestler
"Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought." - Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
"There is an ecclesiastical cliché used in connection with candidates for the ministry. The candidates do not speak of seeking a job but of receiving a “call,” which in their language is from God. It is a euphemistic pleasantry which deceives no one. Nevertheless the conventional phraseology of being “called” is sometimes a psychological reality and represents an inner transformation and the prelude to a life of dedication. It is a pity that the same spirit is not more evident in the field of medicine. The phenomenon of inner urgency which draws us in one direction against rival interests stems from something deeper than a line of reasoning. Rather it is due to the type of person we are. This prompts us to inquire whether there is any purpose or pattern behind our having been born at all." - Arthur W Osborn
"It is easier to understand a nation by listening to its music than by learning its language." - Author Unknown NULL
"Kindness is a language which the blind can see and the deaf can hear." - Author Unknown NULL
"Reality" is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes." - Author Unknown NULL
"Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement." - Christopher Fry
"Time doesn't exist; what we refer to as "past" and "future" have no reality except in our own mental constructs. The idea of time is a convention of thought and language, a social agreement; in truth, we only have this moment." - Dan Millman, born Daniel Jay Millman
"Invention in language should no more be discouraged than should invention in mechanics. Grammar is the grave of letters." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from the lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions." - Eric Hoffer
"The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist." - Eric Hoffer
"Would you like to learn science? Begin by learning your own language." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
"He that travels into a country before he has some entrance into the language, goeth to school and not to travel." - Francis Bacon
"Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe." - Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo
"Fair language grates not the tongue." - George Herbert
"All foreign wisdom doth amount to this, to take all that is given, whether wealth, or love, or language; nothing comes amiss: a good digestion turneth all to health." - George Herbert
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like cuttlefish squirting out ink." - George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
"If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." - George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair
"The language of friendship is not words but meanings." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"In a world of peace and love, music would be the universal language." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Music is the universal language of mankind - poetry their universal pastime and delight." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Thinking cannot be clear till it has had expression. We must write, or speak, or act our thoughts, or they will remain in a half torpid form. Our feelings must have expression, or they will be as clouds, which, till they descend in rain, will never bring up fruit or flower. So it is with all the inward feelings; expression gives them development. Thought is the blossom; language the opening bud; action the fruit behind it." - Henry Ward Beecher
"The eye can only compare and estimate; the ear measures... Both the ear and the eye can evaluate, supplying us with intellectual, psychological, and emotional information of qualitative relevance. But only the ear can measure, thereby mediating quantitative and numerically precise information. If the eye wants to operate quantitatively it can at most estimate, but - as we all know - it is only able to provide approximations, and very often miscalculates. That is why the term 'optical illusion' exists in our language." - Joachim-Ernst Berendt
"Love is a child that talks in broken language, yet then he speaks most plain." - John Dryden