Language Quote by A. A. Gill

Lots of English people say exactly the opposite of what they mean.

— Leon Krier

I'm always interested in how people use language to not say what they mean.

— Greta Gerwig

Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do.

— Agatha Christie

The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything.

— Ernest Hemingway

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

— Simon Van Booy

Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any…

— Robert A. Heinlein

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally…

— George Orwell

Language that tells us, through a more or less emotional reaction, something that can not be said.

— Edwin Arlington Robinson

Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually…

— Paul de Man

In a sense, every form of expression is imposed upon one by social factors, one's own language above all.

— Edward Sapir

It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.

— Karl Kraus

I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language…

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe