"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person."
and Wilde's words have gotten me thinking again about subtleties of language.Also in recent news, the death of Nobelist V. S. Naipaul (1932-2018) -- and here is one of this writer's thought-provoking statements:
Non-fiction can distort;
facts can be realigned.
But fiction never lies. V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
My own thoughts about language most often focus on the condensed languages of mathematics and poetry -- and the need for frequent re-readings before understanding arrives. Here, below, I include a poem by Stephanie Strickland that speaks eloquently of the struggles in which our minds engage concerning objects and the symbols that represent them -- struggles that are involved in creating and reading both mathematics and poetry . . .
Striving All My Life by Stephanie Strickland
Maxwell said: There is no more powerful way
to introduce knowledge to the mind than … as many different
ways as we can, wrenching the mind