"Natural language" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... God, gavest me, practise the sounds in my memory. When they named any thing, and as they spoke turned towards it, I saw and remembered that they called what they would point out by the name they uttered. And that they meant this thing and no other was plain from the motion of their body, the natural language, as it were, of all nations, expressed by the countenance, glances of the eye, gestures of the limbs, and tones of the voice, indicating the affections of the mind, as it pursues, possesses, rejects, or shuns. And thus by constantly hearing words, as they occurred ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... certainly comprehend a certain number of cries, and it is a sort of natural language that they ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... in which we think and feel, all truth must be translated, if we would think and feel respecting it at once rightly, clearly, and vividly. Happy is he, who, by practising this early, has imbued his own natural language with the spirit of God's wisdom and holiness; and who can see, and understand, and feel them the better, because they are so put into a form with which ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... which, like the Buddhist or the Christian, nurse a noble self- discontent, are sure to adopt sooner or later an upward and aspiring form of building. It is not merely that, fancying heaven to be above earth, they point towards heaven. There is a deeper natural language in the pyramidal form of a growing tree. It symbolises growth, or the desire of growth. The Norman tower does nothing of the kind. It does not aspire to grow. Look—I mention an instance with which I am most familiar—at the Norman tower of Bury St. Edmund's. ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... "Yours is the natural language of disappointed youth. You have passed through a fiery ordeal. The sore and quivering heart shrinks from the contact even of sympathy. You fear the application of even Gilead's balm. You are weak and languid, and I will not weary you with discussion; but spring will soon be ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... elementary expressions—words, tones, colors, space-forms—in which the unity of form and content has already been achieved, either by an innate psycho-physical process, as is the case with tones and simple rhythms, or by association and habit, as is the case with the words of any natural language, or the object-meanings which we attach to colors and shapes. The poet does not work with sounds, but with words which already have their definite meanings; his creation consists of the larger whole ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... which I do not call Language, although certainly favorable to the study of languages, in which Gall was practically correct. The anterior surface of the middle lobe, represented by the eye and the face, is a region of natural language or Expression, a tendency to manifestation which is so conspicuous in children, but which becomes subdued in adult life by the higher powers, during which change the infantile fulness of face generally disappears. The prominence of the eye therefore indicates a more active manifestation of intellect ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... true poetic genius, introduced less or more of this adulterated phraseology into his compositions, and the true and the false were inseparably interwoven until, the taste of men becoming gradually perverted, this language was received as a natural language: and at length, by the influence of books upon men, did to a certain degree really become so. Abuses of this kind were imported from one nation to another, and with the progress of refinement this diction became daily more and more corrupt, thrusting out ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... my sacred talisman, that bears the name ineffable; in the other, the mystic record of our holy race. I remembered that I had evoked spirits, that I had communed with the great departed, and that the glowing heavens were to me a natural language. I recalled, as consolation to my gloomy soul, that never had my science been exercised but for a sacred or a noble purpose. And I remembered Israel, my brave, my chosen, and my antique race, slaves, wretched slaves. I was strongly tempted ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... fidelity, and attachment. "Wasp," we are told, at the close of an eventful day, "crouched himself on the coverlet at his master's feet, having first licked his master's hand to ask leave." This is part of the natural language of the dog, and how expressive it is! They speak by their eyes, their tail, and by various gestures, and it is almost impossible to misunderstand their meaning. There is a well-known anecdote of two terriers ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... in England "Chirologia, or the Natural Language of the Hand" by a physician, Dr. John Bulwer, who had perhaps also observed the results in Spain. This was followed in 1648 by his more important work, "Philocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man's Friend," mostly describing ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... not be otherwise if one has lived so much in the south as I; the voice of song seems the natural language for one's ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... seemed to consist principally in the knack of the expression; but here there was a strain of interesting sentiment, and the Scotticism of the language scarcely seemed affected, but appeared to be the natural language of the poet.' It startles us to hear Gilbert talking thus of the Scotticism, after having heard so much of Robert Burns writing naturally in the speech of his home and county. In this poem we have, at least, ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... saw her, sprang up in a minute, and relieved her of her burden. It was a type, a sign, of all the coming relief which his presence would bring. The brother and sister arranged the table together, saying little, but their hands touching, and their eyes speaking the natural language of expression, so intelligible to those of the same blood. The fire had gone out; and Margaret applied herself to light it, for the evenings had begun to be chilly; and yet it was desirable to make all noises as distant as possible from Mrs. ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... argument were caught by the most ignorant from the custom of the age, and their ridiculous misapplication of them is most amusingly exhibited in Costard; whilst examples suited only to the gravest propositions and impersonations, or apostrophes to abstract thoughts impersonated, which are in fact the natural language only of the most vehement agitations of the mind, are adopted by the coxcombry of Armado ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... is not the natural language of parrots and they must have heard it from men. That proves that there are men on ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... promoting the progress of children in reading and in knowledge of language; for the diction of the stories is intended to be often in advance of the natural language of the reader, and yet so used as to ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... too much, we render them impossible. We have alienated children from the best of Fathers, in seeking to teach them a polished language. Go, poor children, and speak to your Heavenly Father in your natural language: however uncultivated it may be, it is not so to Him. A father loves best the speech which is put in disorder by love and respect, because he sees that it comes from the heart: it is more to him than a dry harangue, vain and unfruitful though well studied. Oh, how certain glances of love ...
— A Short Method Of Prayer And Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... entered into his daily life and permeated his thoughts, we may know from his habit of seating himself at the piano in the evening, and improvising music to express what he had both seen and felt throughout the day. To Mendelssohn music was a natural language by which he could express, in the most perfect manner, the emotions which had been aroused by reading or by the contemplation of Nature. Thus, when he went from Scotland to North Wales to stay with some friends named Taylor, he wrote for Susan Taylor a piece called 'The Rivulet,' ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... natural language of Dutch, speaketh very well Spanish and Italian, and, as I hear, Latin. His dealings with me be very wise; his conversation such as much contenteth me; and, as I hear, none returneth discontented from his company. He is greatly ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... his daughter Margaret was born, who was afterwards his favourite, and his amanuensis. He then removed to Paris, where he lived with great splendour and hospitality; and, from time to time, amused himself with poetry, in which he sometimes speaks of the rebels, and their usurpation, in the natural language ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... understanding, which had predominated from the last century, consisted of prose thoughts translated into poetic language. I was led to the conjecture that this style had been kept up by, if it did not wholly arise from, the custom of writing Latin verses. I began to defend the use of natural language, such as "I will remember thee," instead of "Thy image on her wing, Before my fancy's eye shall memory bring;" and adduced, as examples of simplicity, the diction of Greek poets, and of our elder English poets, from Chaucer to Milton. I ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... in our opinion, honestly believes it, of this course on the part of society, he can hardly contain his indignation. Those "uncouth gestures," as one of our contemporaries designates them, were not in our opinion intended for effect, but were the natural language of uncontrollable indignation at what he believes to be the rank in justice of society, which he could not adequately express in words. The audience laughed, but the speaker was far from laughing—a perfect tempest of conflicting emotions, it seemed to us, was agitating his bosom. Strange as it ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... fervid eyes upraised, like a man in an ecstasy; nor can our more prosaic English give an idea of the fluent naturalness and grace with which such images melt into that lovely tongue which seems made to be the natural language of poetry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... were altogether strange and foreign, such as do not occur in any language of the natural world. By this experiment several times repeated, it was made very evident that all the spiritual world have the spiritual language, which has in it nothing that is common to any natural language, and that every man comes of himself into the use of that language after his decease. At the same time also he experienced, that the sound of the spiritual language differs so far from the sound of natural language, that a spiritual sound, though loud, could ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg |
