Books Quote by Jonathan Swift

Written words still have the amazing power to bring out the best and worst of human nature

— Nadine Gordimer

The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient…

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

“The dictionary’s very flaws made the exertions and enthusiasm of its compilers real to his imagination. The vast array of words—entry words, definitions, examples—was…

— Shion Miura

We must now turn from considering the necessary struggle with language arising, as it were, from its very nature and the nature of the…

— Chinua Achebe

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to…

— George Orwell

Always, in epochs when the languages and dialects of a culture have become outstripped by development of a practical sort, these languages become repetitive,…

— Doris Lessing

“It sometimes seems to me that a pestilence has struck the human race in its most distinctive faculty - that is, the use of…

— Italo Calvino

Translations increase the faults of a work and spoil its beauties.

— Voltaire

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and…

— George Orwell

“Words fail.... As a grudging admission, after much denial, that even as we try to preserve and create, through, with, in language, whatever is…

— Ramon C. Sunico

“When authors write best, or at least, when they write most fluently, an influence seems to waken in them which becomes their master, which…

— Charlotte Brontë

No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood; people who write obscurely are either…

— William Zinsser