"It is the way of my people to use light words at such times and say less than they mean. We fear to say too much. It robs us of the right words when a jest is out of place."
Merry to Aragorn in the Houses of Healing.
I once translated that quote into Swissgerman dialect for"Quotes in other languages" - I guess that's why it stuck to my mind, though that was many years ago, before translating tools ruined that game.