A Quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The best part of human language, properly so called, is derived from reflection on the acts of the mind itself.
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The same organizational principles which called us forth into self-reflection have called forth self-reflection out of the planet itself. And the problem then is for us to suspect this, act on our suspicion, and be good detectives, and track down the spirit in its lair. And this is what shamans are doing. They are hunters of spirit.
Our language is the reflection of ourselves. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers.
For one thing, studying language is by itself a part of a study of human intelligence that is, perhaps, the central aspect of human nature. And second, I think, it is a good model for studying other human properties, which ought to be studied by psychologists in the same way.
If the mind is dominated by hatred, the best part of the brain, which is used to judge right and wrong, does not function properly.
There is a language beyond human language, an elemental language, one that arises from the land itself.
Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. To know and to will are two operations of the human mind. Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.
According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man's faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man's faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man's knowledge which belongs to his own mind, is subjective: that which flows in upon him from the world external to him, is objective.
In the middle years of the nineteenth century there first became abundant in this strange world of ours a class of men, men tending for the most part to become elderly, who are called, and who are very properly called, but who dislike extremely to be called--"Scientists.
A presumption of any fact is, properly, an inferring of that fact from other facts that are known; it is an act of reasoning; and much of human knowledge on all subjects is derived from this source.
That is a horrible thing in a way, but it is the one thing poets can bring back to experience, this intense focus on language, which activates words as a portal back into experience. It's a mysterious process that's very hard to articulate, because it's focused entirely on the material of language in a way, but in the interests not just of language itself whatever that would mean - that's the mistake, by the way, that so many so-called "experimental" poets make - but in service to human experience.
I think that metaphor really is a key to explaining thought and language. The human mind comes equipped with an ability to penetrate the cladding of sensory appearance and discern the abstract construction underneath - not always on demand, and not infallibly, but often enough and insightfully enough to shape the human condition. Our powers of analogy allow us to apply ancient neural structures to newfound subject matter, to discover hidden laws and systems in nature, and not least, to amplify the expressive power of language itself.
The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.
I'm not against profanity. It's an important part of the language when used properly.
Programmers are always surrounded by complexity; we cannot avoid it.... If our basic tool, the language in which we design and code our programs, is also complicated, the language itself becomes part of the problem rather than part of its solution.
Faith is a permanent and vital endowment of the human mind-a part of reason itself. The insane alone are without it.
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection - not an invitation for hypnosis.
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