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Nothing in a language is less translatable than its modes of understatement.

— George Steiner The Death of Tragedy (1961)

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More quotes by George Steiner

Compared to Homeric or even to medieval times, modern man inhabits the physical world like a rapacious stranger.

Marxism and the Literary Critic (1967)

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity do not easily resume life.

Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)

For many human beings, religion has been the music which they believe in.

Real Presences (1989)

The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform.

Real Presences (1989)

When the modern scholar cites from a classic text, the quotation seems to burn a hole in his own drab page.

The Death of Tragedy (1961)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: George Steiner (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.