Mark Twain Quotes About Language

We have collected for you the TOP of Mark Twain's best quotes about Language! Here are collected all the quotes about Language starting from the birthday of the Author – November 30, 1835! We hope you will be inspired to new achievements with our constantly updated collection of quotes. At the moment, this page contains 35 sayings of Mark Twain about Language. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
All quotes by Mark Twain: 4th Of July Acceptance Accidents Accomplishment Achievement Acting Adam And Eve Addiction Adventure Adversity Advertising Affairs Affection Age Aging Alcohol Ambition Angels Animal Cruelty Animal Rights Animals Anxiety Appearance Appreciation Arguing Army Arrogance Art Astronomy Atheism Atheist Attitude Austen Authority Babies Balance Beauty Beer Being Alone Being Thankful Belief Bible Bicycle Birds Birth Birthdays Bitterness Blame Blessings Bliss Boat Bones Books Bravery Brotherhood Brothers Business Cat And Dog Cats Censorship Certainty Challenges Change Character Charity Chastity Cheers Children Choices Christ Christianity Church Cigars Coffee College College Education Comedy Commodities Communication Community Compassion Compliments Composition Confidence Conflict Conformity Conscience Conservatism Constitution Cooking Copyright Corruption Country Courage Creation Crime Criticism Critics Culture Curiosity Cursing Dance Dancing Darkness Daughters Death Death And Dying Deception Decisions Defeat Democracy Design Desire Determination Devil Devotion Difficulty Dignity Disappointment Diversity Divorce Dogs Doubt Dreads Dreams Drinking Drunkenness Duty Dying Earth Eating Economics Education Effort Elections Emotions Encouragement Enemies Energy Enlightenment Enthusiasm Entrepreneurship Environment Envy Epic Eternity Ethics Evidence Evil Evolution Excuses Exercise Experience Eyes Failing Failure Family Fashion Fathers Fear Fear Of Death Feelings Fighting Finding Yourself Fitness Flattery Flight Flowers Focus Food Forgiveness Freaks Free Speech Freedom Freedom And Liberty Friends Friendship Fun Funeral Funny Future Gardens Genius Getting Old Getting Older Giving Giving Up Goals God Gold Good Deeds Good Times Gossip Grace Graduation Gratitude Greatness Greed Grief Grieving Growing Old Growing Up Growth Guns Habits Happiness Happy Hard Times Hard Work Hate Healing Health Heart Heaven Heaven And Hell Hell Hilarious Hills Hinduism History Holiday Home Honesty Honor Horses House Human Nature Humanity Humility Hunger Hunting Hurt Hypocrisy Ignorance Imagination Impulse Independence Individuality Innovation Insanity Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Integrity Intelligence Irony Journalism Journey Joy Judgement Judging Judgment Jury Justice Killing Kindness Knowledge Labor Language Laughter Law Of Attraction Lawyers Laziness Leadership Learning Liars Liberty Libraries Life Life And Death Life And Love Lifetime Listening Literature Live Life Loneliness Losing Loss Love Loyalty Luck Lying Madness Mankind Manners Marriage Math Meaning Of Life Memorial Day Memories Military Millionaire Miracles Mistakes Moderation Modesty Mom Monarchy Money Monument Moon Morality Morning Motherhood Mothers Motivation Motivational Mountain Music Nationalism Nature Neighbors Never Giving Up New Baby New Year Office Old Age Opinions Opportunity Optimism Originality Pain Parenting Parents Parties Passion Past Patriotism Patriots Peace Perception Perfection Perseverance Personality Pessimism Pets Philosophy Pirates Planning Pleasure Politicians Politics Positive Positive Thinking Positivity Poverty Power Praise Prayer Preaching Prejudice Pride Privacy Procrastination Profanity Progress Prohibition Property Prophecy Prosperity Public Speaking Purpose Quality Rage Rain Reading Reading Books Reality Recognition Recovery Regret Relationships Religion Religion And Politics Reputation Respect Responsibility Revolution Ridicule Risk Royalty Running Sad Sadness Sailing Saints Salvation Sanity Sarcasm Satan School Science Science And Religion Self Esteem Seven Shame Silence Simplicity Sin Sinners Skins Slavery Slaves Sleep Smoking Social Justice Society Soldiers Solitude Son Songs Sorrow Soul Spirituality Sports Spring Strength Struggle Students Study Stupidity Style Success Suffering Summer Sunday Sunshine Swearing Swimming Talent Taxes Teachers Teaching Temperance Temptation Terror Theology This Day Time Time Travel Tobacco Today Trade Tradition Tragedy Train Training Travel Trust Truth Twins Tyranny Undertaker Universe Vacation Values Vegetarian Violence Virtue Vision Vocation Voting Wagner Waiting Walking War Water Wealth Weddings Whiskey Wife Wine Winning Winter Wisdom Wit Work Working Together Worry Worship Writing Youth more...
  • Never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German.

    Mark Twain (1976). “Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals, Volume II: (1877-1883)”, p.121, Univ of California Press
  • A dream...I was trying to explain to St. Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit.

    Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.142, Courier Corporation
  • I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.

    Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.65, Chartwell
  • I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.

  • It is easier for a cannibal to enter the Kingdom of Heaven through the eye of a rich man's needle that it is for any other foreigner to read the terrible German script.

    Heaven  
    Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.149, Courier Corporation
  • Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

  • Now when I had mastered the language of this water, and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry, had gone out of the majestic river!

    Mark Twain, Milton Meltzer (2002). “Mark Twain Himself: A Pictorial Biography”, p.35, University of Missouri Press
  • Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

    Mark Twain (2015). “Bite-Size Twain: Wit and Wisdom from the Literary Legend”, p.18, St. Martin's Press
  • I speak French with timidity, and not flowingly--except when excited. When using that language I have often noticed that I have hardly ever been mistaken for a Frenchman, except, perhaps, by horses; never, I believe, by people.

    Mark Twain (1992). “Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, and Essays, Volume 1: 1852-1890”, p.1020, Library of America
  • There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.

    Mark Twain (2016). “A Tramp Abroad”, p.377, Xist Publishing
  • I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter.

    Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.3252, GENERAL PRESS
  • In early times some sufferer had to sit up with a toothache, and he put in the time inventing the German language.

    Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.148, Courier Corporation
  • I don't believe there is anything in the whole earth that you can't learn in Berlin except the German language.

    Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.149, Courier Corporation
  • The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.

    Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain on Common Sense: Timeless Advice and Words of Wisdom from America's Most-Revered Humorist”, p.10, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
  • I would not rob you of your food or your clothes or your umbrella, but if I caught your German out I would take it. But I don't study any more,- I have given it up.

    Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.143, Courier Corporation
  • ...the circumstances and the atmosphere always have so much to do in directing a conversation, especially a German conversation, which is only a kind of an insurrection, anyway.

    Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.68, Courier Corporation
  • What is the real function, the essential function, the supreme function, of language? Isn't it merely to convey ideas and emotions? Certainly. Then if we can do it with words of fonetic brevity and compactness, why keep the present cumbersome forms?

    Ideas  
    Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain”, p.276, Univ of California Press
  • ...mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic language enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

    Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.149, Courier Corporation
  • My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.

    Mark Twain (2016). “A Tramp Abroad”, p.378, Xist Publishing
  • How charmed I am when I overhear a German word which I understand!

    Mark Twain (2014). “Mark Twain’s Letters & Speeches (Annotated Edition)”, p.367, Jazzybee Verlag
  • Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.

    Book  
  • It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.

    Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.3129, GENERAL PRESS
  • The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label.

    Mark Twain (2016). “A Tramp Abroad”, p.85, Xist Publishing
  • Kindness is a language herd by deaf men and felt by blind men.

  • By reading keep in a state of excited igorance, like a blind man in a house afire; flounder around, immensely but unintelligently interested; don't know how I got in and can't find the way out, but I'm having a booming time all to myself.Don't know what a Schelgesetzentwurf is, but I keep as excited over it and as worried about it as if it were my own child. I simply live on the Sch.; it is my daily bread. I wouldn't have the question settled for anything in the world.

  • ... the English alphabet is pure insanity..., It can hardly spell any word in the language with any degree of certainty.

    Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain”, p.268, Univ of California Press
  • So avoid using the word 'very' because it's lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don't use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women - and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won't do in your essays. What you do today is important, because you are sacrificing a day of your life for it. Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

  • The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.

    Book  
    Mark Twain (2017). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated Edition): Novels, Short Stories, Memoir, Travel Books, Letters, Biography, Articles & Speeches: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn, Life on the Mississippi, Yankee in King Arthur's Court…”, p.6903, e-artnow
  • It's awful undermining to the intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you know your brains all run together, and you feel them flapping around in your head same as so much drawn butter.

    Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.142, Courier Corporation
  • The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

    Mark Twain (1871). “The Innocents Abroad; Or, The New Pilgrim's Progress ...”, p.379
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    Mark Twain quotes about: 4th Of July Acceptance Accidents Accomplishment Achievement Acting Adam And Eve Addiction Adventure Adversity Advertising Affairs Affection Age Aging Alcohol Ambition Angels Animal Cruelty Animal Rights Animals Anxiety Appearance Appreciation Arguing Army Arrogance Art Astronomy Atheism Atheist Attitude Austen Authority Babies Balance Beauty Beer Being Alone Being Thankful Belief Bible Bicycle Birds Birth Birthdays Bitterness Blame Blessings Bliss Boat Bones Books Bravery Brotherhood Brothers Business Cat And Dog Cats Censorship Certainty Challenges Change Character Charity Chastity Cheers Children Choices Christ Christianity Church Cigars Coffee College College Education Comedy Commodities Communication Community Compassion Compliments Composition Confidence Conflict Conformity Conscience Conservatism Constitution Cooking Copyright Corruption Country Courage Creation Crime Criticism Critics Culture Curiosity Cursing Dance Dancing Darkness Daughters Death Death And Dying Deception Decisions Defeat Democracy Design Desire Determination Devil Devotion Difficulty Dignity Disappointment Diversity Divorce Dogs Doubt Dreads Dreams Drinking Drunkenness Duty Dying Earth Eating Economics Education Effort Elections Emotions Encouragement Enemies Energy Enlightenment Enthusiasm Entrepreneurship Environment Envy Epic Eternity Ethics Evidence Evil Evolution Excuses Exercise Experience Eyes Failing Failure Family Fashion Fathers Fear Fear Of Death Feelings Fighting Finding Yourself Fitness Flattery Flight Flowers Focus Food Forgiveness Freaks Free Speech Freedom Freedom And Liberty Friends Friendship Fun Funeral Funny Future Gardens Genius Getting Old Getting Older Giving Giving Up Goals God Gold Good Deeds Good Times Gossip Grace Graduation Gratitude Greatness Greed Grief Grieving Growing Old Growing Up Growth Guns Habits Happiness Happy Hard Times Hard Work Hate Healing Health Heart Heaven Heaven And Hell Hell Hilarious Hills Hinduism History Holiday Home Honesty Honor Horses House Human Nature Humanity Humility Hunger Hunting Hurt Hypocrisy Ignorance Imagination Impulse Independence Individuality Innovation Insanity Inspiration Inspirational Inspiring Integrity Intelligence Irony Journalism Journey Joy Judgement Judging Judgment Jury Justice Killing Kindness Knowledge Labor Language Laughter Law Of Attraction Lawyers Laziness Leadership Learning Liars Liberty Libraries Life Life And Death Life And Love Lifetime Listening Literature Live Life Loneliness Losing Loss Love Loyalty Luck Lying Madness Mankind Manners Marriage Math Meaning Of Life Memorial Day Memories Military Millionaire Miracles Mistakes Moderation Modesty Mom Monarchy Money Monument Moon Morality Morning Motherhood Mothers Motivation Motivational Mountain Music Nationalism Nature Neighbors Never Giving Up New Baby New Year Office Old Age Opinions Opportunity Optimism Originality Pain Parenting Parents Parties Passion Past Patriotism Patriots Peace Perception Perfection Perseverance Personality Pessimism Pets Philosophy Pirates Planning Pleasure Politicians Politics Positive Positive Thinking Positivity Poverty Power Praise Prayer Preaching Prejudice Pride Privacy Procrastination Profanity Progress Prohibition Property Prophecy Prosperity Public Speaking Purpose Quality Rage Rain Reading Reading Books Reality Recognition Recovery Regret Relationships Religion Religion And Politics Reputation Respect Responsibility Revolution Ridicule Risk Royalty Running Sad Sadness Sailing Saints Salvation Sanity Sarcasm Satan School Science Science And Religion Self Esteem Seven Shame Silence Simplicity Sin Sinners Skins Slavery Slaves Sleep Smoking Social Justice Society Soldiers Solitude Son Songs Sorrow Soul Spirituality Sports Spring Strength Struggle Students Study Stupidity Style Success Suffering Summer Sunday Sunshine Swearing Swimming Talent Taxes Teachers Teaching Temperance Temptation Terror Theology This Day Time Time Travel Tobacco Today Trade Tradition Tragedy Train Training Travel Trust Truth Twins Tyranny Undertaker Universe Vacation Values Vegetarian Violence Virtue Vision Vocation Voting Wagner Waiting Walking War Water Wealth Weddings Whiskey Wife Wine Winning Winter Wisdom Wit Work Working Together Worry Worship Writing Youth