Language is not up to that…

I’m reading this paper that quotes José Ortega and it absolutely loved and had to interrupt my reading to catalogue it to no one in particular:

“Man, when he sets himself to speak, does so because he believes that he will be able to say what he thinks. Now, this is an illusion. Language is not up to that. It says, more or less, a part of what we think, and raises an impenetrable obstacle to the transmission of the rest.”

It’s lovely, no?