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All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

A man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself - like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks.

There are times when the power of language is not the power that is needed.

There are times in life when language fails us, when everything that needs to be said can be expressed only by saying nothing at all.

Speech is civilization itself.

All true language is incomprehensible, like the chatter of a beggar's teeth.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

You don't talk to a linguist without having what you say taken down and used in evidence against you at some point in time.