Sublime

Jorge Luis Borges,

With no written law to guide him, the task of the chief is to search through his vast repertoire of proverbs and sayings to find one that suits the situation and is equally satisfying to both complainants.

Language was an overlay, so loud that it usually shouted out all the other thoughts in the human mind. Whenever I think about thinking, my thoughts become words. It is the language talking at me. But the language came from outside. I think I control it, but it controls me back. Like the Hive Queen in the minds of the drones, language becomes part o

“You’re saying the word wrong, Kathy,” her sponsor, who was her thesis advisor, told her. “It’s ‘ask.’ Not ‘aks.’ ” Reflects Phillips, who is African-American: “A lot of white people would be concerned they’d sound racist if they pointed these things out to an African-American colleague, but she realized the deleterious impact of how I spoke on oth

The older women were the arks of instinctual knowing and behavior who could invest the young mothers with the same. Women give this knowing to each other through words, but also by other means. Complicated messages about what and how to be are sent simply through a look, a touch with the palm of the hand, a murmur, or a special kind of “I cherish y

The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer, and his sons are born in exile.

“To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein