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Besides 'tis known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak;
That Latin was no more difficile
That to a blackbird 'tis to whistle.
Author: Samuel Butler (1)
Source: Hudibras (pt. I, canto I, l. 51)
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A Babylonish dialect
Which learned pedants much affect.
Author: Samuel Butler (1)
Source: Hudibras (pt. I, canto I, l. 93)
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For though to smatter ends of Greek
Or Latin be the rhetoric
Of pedants counted, and vain-glorious,
To smatter French is meritorious.
- Samuel Butler (1),
Author: Samuel Butler (1)
Source: Remains in Verse and Prose--Satire--Upon Our Ridiculous Imitation of the French (line 127), a Greek
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I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth.
Author: Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron)
Source: Beppo (st. 44)
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. . . Philologists, who chase
A painting syllable through time and space
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's Ark.
Author: William Cowper
Source: Retirement (l. 691)
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He Greek and Latin speaks with greater ease
Than hogs eat acorns, and tame pigeons peas.
Author: Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex
Source: Panegyric on Tom Coriate
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Lash'd into Latin by the tingling rod.
Author: John Gay
Source: The Birth of the Squire (l. 46)
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He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own.
[Ger., Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner
eigenen.]
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Source: Kunst und Alterthum
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Small Latin, and less Greek.
Author: Ben Jonson
Source: To the Memory of Shakespeare
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Everything is Greek, when it is more shameful to be ignorant of
Latin.
[Lat., Omnia Graece!
Cum sit turpe magis nostris nescire Latine.]
Author: Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenal)
Source: Satires (VI, 187), (second line said to be spurious)
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Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises
one, slights the other.
Author: Jean de la Bruyere
Source: The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (ch. XII)
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It is Hebrew to me.
[Fr., C'est de l'hebreu pour moi.]
Author: Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
Source: L'Etourdi (act III, sc. 3)
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He attempts to use language which he does not know.
[Lat., Negatas artifex sequi voces.]
Author: Persius (Aulus Persius Flaccus)
Source: Satires--Prologue (XI)
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This is your devoted friend, sir, the manifold linguist and the
armipotent soldier.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: All's Well That Ends Well (Second Lord at IV, iii)
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But those that understood him smiled at one another and shook
their heads; but for mine own part, if was Greek to me.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Julius Caesar (Casca at I, ii)
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Away with him, away with him! He speaks Latin.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part II (Cade at IV, vii)
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O, good my lord, no Latin!
I am not such a truant since my coming
As not to know the language I have lived in.
A strnage tongue makes my cause more strnage, suspicious.
Pray speak in English.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Life of King Henry the Eighth (Katherine at III, i)
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He plays o' th' viol-de-gamboys, and speaks three or four
languages word for word without book, and hath all the good gifts
of nature.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Twelfth Night, or, What You Will (Toby at I, iii)
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But to the purpose--for we cite our faults
That they may hold excused our lawless lives;
And partly, seeing you are beautified
With goodly shape, and by your own report
A linguist, and a man of such perfection
As we do in our quality much want--
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (First Outlaw at IV, i)
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Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of
the two!
Author: Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Source: The Critic (act I, sc. 2)
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