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Roland Barthes Quotes

Total quotes (6)

Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes

Birthname

Birthday November 12, 1915

Birthplace Cherbourg-Octeville, France

Death March 26, 1980

Manner of Death Accident

Educated At University Of Paris

Nationality France

Occupations Professor, Linguist, Non-fiction Writer, Diarist, Semiologist

Total quotes (6)

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

— Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Language Words Desire Passion

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...He is in love: he creates meaning, always and everywhere, out of nothing...

— Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Love Inspired by Love inspiration motivation

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Once the Author is gone, the claim to 'decipher' a text becomes quite useless. To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, to furnish it with a final signification, to close the writing.

— Roland Barthes, constantvzw.org

Authority Authorship Death of The Author Infinity Joyful Complexity Ownership Control

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I encounter millions of bodies in my life; of these millions, I may desire some hundreds; but of these hundreds, I love only one.

— Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Love Attraction Encounter Life

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Am I in love?—yes,since I am waiting. The other one never waits. Sometimes I want to play the part of the one who doesn't wait; I try to busy myself elsewhere, to arrive late; but I always lose at this game. Whatever I do, I find myself there, with nothing to do, punctual, even ahead of time. The lover's fatal identity is precisely this: I am the one who waits.

— Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments

Love Waiting For Love love & patience love & relationship love & life

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We know that a text does not consist of a line of words, releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God), but is a space of many dimensions, in which are wedded and contested various kinds of writing, no one of which is original: the text is a tissue of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture.

— Roland Barthes, constantvzw.org

Author-God Copyright Originality Ownership Remix Singular Meaning Theology Word of God

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Related quotes to Roland Barthes tagged Language, Words, Love

That is the ultimate project for me—figuring out how language can perform this same kind of trick that music does.

— John Edgar Wideman, The Art of Fiction

Music Challenge Language writer

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I think communication starts when words are not present at all. I think we put so much emphasis on language, actually silence is so much more important

— Marina Abramovic, The Artist is Present

Communication Silence Feelings Quiet Language expressing expression

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Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it.

— Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

Language Feelings emotions Connection Understand World language beyond words

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And silence, like darkness, can be kind; it, too, is a language.

— Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy and Midnight All Day: A Novel and Stories

Silence Darkness Language

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Eric: Well, first the egg travels down the fallopian tube to the uterus where it attaches to the wall...

Red: Eric, for God's sakes, that's no language for a woman to hear!

— Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith), That '70s Show, Season 1: Eric's Birthday

egg fallopian tube uterus Pregnancy Language Woman

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Your eyes are full of language.

— Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

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I learn a great deal by merely observing you, and letting you talk as long as you please, and taking note of what you do not say.

— T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

Language Observing

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Language does not arise from a need to escape but from a desire to enter, not from frowns of impotence but from a surplus of vitality and wonder.

— Robert Pogue Harrison, Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age

Language expression Power of Thoughts

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I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws.

— Emil Cioran, The New Gods

Language Words impact slam of words Pain

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Language allows us to reach out to people, to touch them with our innermost fears, hopes, disappointments, victories. To reach out to people we’ll never meet. It’s the greatest legacy you could ever leave your children or your loved ones: The history of how you felt.

— Simon Van Booy, Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories

Language Verbal Expressing opinions expressing feelings

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Howard: You know, I'm really glad you decided to learn Mandarin.

Sheldon: Why?

Howard: Once you're fluent, you'll have a billion more people to annoy instead of me.

— Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg), The Big Bang Theory, Season 1: The Tangerine Factor

glad learn Mandarin Annoying fluent Language

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Forelsket: The indescribable euphoria experienced as you begin to fall in love.

— Norwegian Saying, Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World

Untranslatable Words Global Language Norwegian

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Flynt’s revenge through language conceived more than two decades earlier would seem to remain in force, thereby suggesting that absence of meaning may also point the way to revolt.

— Robert C. Morgan, Henry Flynt @ Audio Visual Arts (AVA)

Conceptual Art Revolution Language Meaning Perspective

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Nothing is inevitable in history, media, or culture — but literacy is the only thing that's even close. Bet for better video, bet for better speech, bet for better things we can't imagine — but if you bet against text, you will lose.

— Tim Carmody, Facebook is wrong, text is deathless

Media Formats Don't Die Media Formats Layer On Each Other Text Language Reading Writing The Technology of Thought And Expression

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His every syllable flirted.

— Hazel, The Fault in Our Stars

Flirting talking Language My Favorites Flirt

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The opposite of language is not silence
but space.

— Jenny George, The Gesture of Turning a Mask Around

Language Silence Space Poetry My Favorites Poetic Lines Understanding Silence

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Even though we can't communicate using the same language, we use music instead.

— Kim Jonghyun, via www.goodreads.com

Music Language music is universal

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Learn a language. If you’re both sitting at the computer at a loss for new conversation topics, you might as well open a language learning program and go through it together, lesson by lesson.

— Escape Normal, Long Distance Relationship Activities: The Ultimate List

Long Distance Language Conversation

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I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.

— David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

Object gender Language Words

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Two languages in one brain? No one can live at that speed!

— Eddie Izzard, Definite Article

bilingual Language Intelligence

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Do not weep
but once, and a long

time then
Thereafter eat till

your stomach spills over
No more! you’ll cry

too full for your eyes
to leak

*

The words will wait

— Kevin Young, Dear Darkness: Poems

Kevin Young Mourning Death Grieving Loss Language

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The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.

— John Ruskin, Lectures on Art

Language Secret gentle sympathy

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The entire experience of the world is linguistically mediated.

— Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, 30th Anniversary Edition

Language Language Is Everything No Science Without Literature Communications

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Language matters. It is the. . .highest purpose of language to make things clear & help us see. We are all language detectives.

— Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions

Language Linguistics Communication Words

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Language, even more than color, defines who you are to people.

— Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

Language Color Identity

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So much of language is unspoken. So much of language is compromised of looks and gestures and sounds that are not words. People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication.

— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel

Language Communication

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It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.

— George Orwell, 1984

destruction of words Words Language Communication impact of words synonyms antonyms Literature

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Words have power.

— Mira Grant, Blackout

Words Words are Powerful Language Communication Inspirational

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It was words that I fell for. In the end, it was words that broke my heart.

— Lang Leav, Memories

Words Words about love Words are Powerful Love Language Broken Heart

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For me, words that you can’t understand in a book aren’t there to torture or remind people that they don’t know. I always felt they were to remind people that part of the experience of reading has always been collective. You learn to read with someone else…Reading is a collective enterprise.

— Junot Dìaz, Junot Diaz, in conversation at Sydney Writers' Festival

Writers Writing Novels Words Books Language Community Reading

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When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more, nor less.

— Lewis Carrol, Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carrol (2008-11-04)

Words Meaning Language

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Feel like your spouse is a master at twisting your words into something ugly when they weren’t intended that way? Standard tactic.

— James J. Sexton, Signs Your Spouse is Manipulating You (and How to Handle It)

manipulation Words Language

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I don't know the meaning of half those long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either!

— Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Wisehouse Classics

Words Language Intelligence

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Let my lips serve as my pen and my love be the ink. Let me write on your body in a language for only us to know.

— J. L., WNQ-Writers via Tumblr

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Language is not a protocol legislated by an authority but rather a wiki that pools the contributions of millions of writers and speakers, who ceaselessly bend the language to their needs and who inexorably age, die, and get replaced by their children, who adapt the language in their turn.

— Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

Adaptability Authority Change Evolution Language Wiki Evolution of Rules

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It all adds up to one thing: peace, silence, solitude. The world and its noise are out of sight and far away. Forest and field, sun and wind and sky, earth and water, all speak the same language.

— Thomas Merton, The Waters of Siloe

Peace Silence Solitude Life Language

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