A Quote by Edwin Newman

Language is in decline. Not only has eloquence departed but simple, direct speech as well, though pomposity and banality have not.

Edwin Newman

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Banality Decline Departed Direct Eloquence Language Only Pomposity Simple Speech Though Well

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Edwin Newman
January 25, 1919 - August 13, 2010

All language begins with speech, and the speech of common men at that, but when it develops to the point of becoming a literary medium it only looks like speech.

Raymond Chandler

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.

Martin Farquhar Tupper

C++ is in that inconvenient spot where it doesn't help make things simple enough to be truly usable for prototyping or simple GUI programming, and yet isn't the lean system programming language that C is that actively encourages you to use simple and direct constructs.

Linus Torvalds

Well, the film's not only pricking the pomposity of the Church, it's pricking the pomposity, and sometimes you would think fraudulence, of the insurance companies. I had never read anything like this until I was doing the film, but Mark [Joffe, the director] and people showed me stuff where, like a flood, it mattered where the water came from. If you're flooded from above, you get the money; if you're flooded from below, you don't. What's that about?

Billy Connolly

Silence is never-ending speech. Vocal speech obstructs the other speech of silence. In silence one is in intimate contact with the surroundings. Language is only a medium for communicating one's thoughts to another. Silence is ever speaking.

Ramana Maharshi

I just don't think people get off on language anymore. Language used to be an elevated art. It used to be for people what music can be. But people don't learn to do that anymore, so eloquence is merely a matter of waste. Who needs a good vocabulary and proper English? Eloquence - it's dead and who needs it?

Kurt Vonnegut

It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.

Joseph Brodsky

Henceforth I would have to cosent to combine two voices: the voice of banality (to say what everyone sees and knows) and the voice of singularity (to replenish such banality with all the élan of an emotion which belonged only to myself).

Roland Barthes

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

Roland Barthes

In TV, when you come in to direct an episode, you are effectively learning an established language; you then have to try to learn to speak it really well. But on a movie, you are the guy. You are creating the language; you make most of the decisions.

Alan Taylor

Labor force participation peaked in early 2000, so its decline began well before the Great Recession. A portion of that decline clearly relates to the aging of the baby boom generation. But the pace of decline accelerated with the recession.

Janet Yellen

Ragamuffins are simple, direct and honest. Their speech is unaffected. They are slow to claim, "God told me..." As they make their way through the world, they bear wordless, prophetic witness.

Brennan Manning

Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!

Lord Byron

The truth is so simple that it is regarded as a pretentious banality.

Dag Hammarskjold

Speak only the speech that neither torments self nor does harm to others. That speech is truly well spoken.

Gautama Buddha

We think only through the medium of words. Languages are true analytical methods. Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.

Antoine Lavoisier

A Quote by Edwin Newman

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