Linguists Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings

20 Linguists Quotes
[1-20] 
“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.”
Samuel Butler (1) Quotes
Source: Hudibras (pt. I, canto I, l. 51)
“A Babylonish dialect Which learned pedants much affect.”
Samuel Butler (1) Quotes
Source: Hudibras (pt. I, canto I, l. 93)
“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),”
Samuel Butler (1) Quotes
Source: Remains in Verse and Prose--Satire--Upon Our Ridiculous Imitation of the French (line 127), a Greek
“I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth.”
Lord Byron (George Gordon Noel Byron) Quotes
Source: Beppo (st. 44)
“. . . 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.”
William Cowper Quotes
Source: Retirement (l. 691)
“He Greek and Latin speaks with greater ease Than hogs eat acorns, and tame pigeons peas.”
Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex Quotes
Source: Panegyric on Tom Coriate
“Lash'd into Latin by the tingling rod.”
John Gay Quotes
Source: The Birth of the Squire (l. 46)
“He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own. [Ger., Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen.]”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes
Source: Kunst und Alterthum
“Small Latin, and less Greek.”
Ben Jonson Quotes
Source: To the Memory of Shakespeare
“Everything is Greek, when it is more shameful to be ignorant of Latin. [Lat., Omnia Graece! Cum sit turpe magis nostris nescire Latine.]”
Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenal) Quotes
Source: Satires (VI, 187), (second line said to be spurious)
“Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises one, slights the other.”
Jean de la Bruyere Quotes
Source: The Characters or Manners of the Present Age (ch. XII)
“It is Hebrew to me. [Fr., C'est de l'hebreu pour moi.]”
Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere Quotes
Source: L'Etourdi (act III, sc. 3)
“He attempts to use language which he does not know. [Lat., Negatas artifex sequi voces.]”
Persius (Aulus Persius Flaccus) Quotes
Source: Satires--Prologue (XI)
“This is your devoted friend, sir, the manifold linguist and the armipotent soldier.”
William Shakespeare Quotes
Source: All's Well That Ends Well (Second Lord at IV, iii)
“But those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but for mine own part, if was Greek to me.”
William Shakespeare Quotes
Source: Julius Caesar (Casca at I, ii)
“Away with him, away with him! He speaks Latin.”
William Shakespeare Quotes
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part II (Cade at IV, vii)
“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.”
William Shakespeare Quotes
Source: The Life of King Henry the Eighth (Katherine at III, i)
“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.”
William Shakespeare Quotes
Source: Twelfth Night, or, What You Will (Toby at I, iii)
“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--”
William Shakespeare Quotes
Source: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (First Outlaw at IV, i)
“Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!”
Richard Brinsley Sheridan Quotes
Source: The Critic (act I, sc. 2)