Language is the dress of thought.—Samuel Johnson
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.—George Orwell
Language is the light of the mind.—John Stuart Mill
Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.—Elizabeth Bowen
The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.—Lewis Thomas
I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.—Tom Lehrer
“Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
Never use a long word where a short one will do.
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
Never use a passive when you can use the active.
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”
GEORGE ORWELL from Politics and the
English Language.