Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

I took Latin and Spanish. I can speak a very small amount of Spanish, but Latin has sort of gone away! Unless I was joining the Catholic Church, there would be no need to learn Latin.

As a singer, it's basic to preserve what I like to do, which is music, and also to remember my cradlesongs in Spanish.

My mother had been a Latin teacher, and she was always very fascinated with words. She and I shared books and responded to them.

The telling room is, in Spanish, known as 'el contador.'

French is the language of diplomacy. Spanish is the language of bureaucracy.

Sydney: I like Latin. It's fun. Eddie: I can't believe you think we're the strange ones.

It's Latin, which is an excellent language for mischief-making, which is why governments are so fond of it.

Dr Johnson said, the inscription should have been in Latin, as every thing intended to be universal and permanent, should be.

The only living language is the language in which we think and have our being.

A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.

Plurality of languages: [...] It is crucial 1. that there are many languages and that they differ not only in vocabulary, but also in grammar, and so in mode of thought and 2. that all languages are learnable.

It is only possible to speak in the language and in the spirit of one's time.

The language in New Mexico is very different. At first when you hear the speech here, you don't really know what to do with it, but then I just went with it, because as a writer as well as a translator I do believe that translated words are not different names for the same thing. They're different names for different things. I tried to stay as true as I could, so I used Ruben Cobos' dictionary of Southwestern Spanish, and when I went into Spanish I never assumed the word I would use would be the word a nuevomexicano would use.

All I know is what I have words for.

You need language for thought, and you need language to anticipate death. There is no abstract thought without language and no anticipation. I think the anticipation of death without language would be impossible.

I am not in any way opposed to medieval studies (or for that matter Latin).

Actually, my first group was a folkloric group, an Argentine folkloric group when I was 10. By the time I was 11 or 12 I started writing songs in English. And then after a while of writing these songs in English it came to me that there was no reason for me to sing in English because I lived in Argentina and also there was something important [about Spanish], so I started writing in Spanish.

It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard.

...language is never innocent.

The nature of language may determine what most people say, but I always speak my own meaning.

We see only what we have names for.

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.

One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand

It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.

I will never stop working on Spanish-language projects because that's my language, and because I'm a Latina and Mexican before anything else.