<bq href="http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18931" caption="Words" source="The Language Log" author="G.K. Chesterton">He knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless than the colours of an autumn forest… Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them, in all their tones and semitones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.</bq> The first comment in the post includes a similar quote from Flaubert: <bq>Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.</bq>