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Well languag'd Danyel.
Author: Sir William Browne
Source: Brittania's Pastorals (bk. II, song 2, l. 303)
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Morals and manners will rise or decline with our attention to
grammar.
Author: Jason Chamberlain
Source: in inaugural address at University of Vermont, 1811
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To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to
my horse--German.
Author: Jason Chamberlain
Source: in inaugural address at University of Vermont, 1811
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Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time,
place, and company.
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Source: Biographia Literaria (ch. X)
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And who in time knows whither we may vent
The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores
This gain of our best glory shall be sent,
T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores?
What worlds in th' yet unformed Occident
May come refin'd with th' accents that are ours?
Author: Samuel Daniel
Source: Musophilus (last lines)
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Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows
Where noun, and verb, and participle grows.
Author: John Dryden
Source: Sixth Satire of Juvenal (l. 583)
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Language is fossil poetry.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: Essays--The Poet
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Language is a city to the building of which every human being
brought a stone.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Source: Letters and Social Aims--Quotation and Originality
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And don't confound the language of the nation
With long-tailed words in osity and ation.
Author: John Hookham Frere
Source: King Arthur and his Round Table (introduction, st. 6)
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Language is the only instrument of science, and words are but the
signs of ideas.
Author: Samuel Johnson
Source: Preface to his English Dictionary
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The accent of one's country dwells in the mind and in the heart
as much as in the language.
[Fr., L'accent du pays ou l'on est ne demeure dans l'esprit et
dans le coeur comme dans le langage.]
Author: Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
Source: Maximes (342)
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Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.
Author: Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld
Source: Maximes (342)
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Writ in the climate of heaven, in the language spoken by angels.
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Source: The Children of the Lord's Supper (l. 262)
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Grammar, which knows how to lord it over kings, and with high
hands makes them obey its laws.
[Fr., La grammaire, qui sait regenter jusqu'aux rois,
Et les fait, la main haute, obeir a ses lois.]
Author: Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
Source: Les Femmes Savantes (II, 6)
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A laudation in Greek is of marvellous efficacy on the title-page
of a book.
[Fr., Une louange en grec est d'une merveilleuse efficace a la
tete d'un livre.]
Author: Jean Baptiste Poquelin Moliere
Source: Preface--Les Precieuses Ridicules
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Accent is the soul of a language; it gives the feeling and truth
to it.
[Fr., L'accent est l'ame du discours, il lui donne le sentiment
et la verite.]
Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Source: Emile (I)
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Syllables govern the world.
Author: John Selden
Source: Table Talk--Power
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Fie, fie upon her!
There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip;
Nay, her foot speaks. Her wanton spirits look out
At every joint and motive of her body.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The History of Troilus and Cressida (Ulysses at IV, v)
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Thou whoreson zed, thou unnecessary letter!
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: King Lear (Kent at II, ii)
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He has strangled
His language in his tears.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Life of King Henry the Eighth (King Henry at V, i)
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You taught me language, and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Tempest (Caliban at I, ii)
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There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very
gesture.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Winter's Tale (First Gentleman at V, ii)
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Great Britain and the United States are nations separated by a
common language.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Winter's Tale (First Gentleman at V, ii)
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I am the King of Rome, and above grammar.
[Lat., Ego sum rex Romanus, et supra grammaticam.]
Author: Sigismund
Source: said at the 1414 Council of Constance to a prelate who objected to his grammar
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Don Chaucer. well of English undefyled
On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.
Author: Edmund Spenser
Source: The Faerie Queene (IV, 2, 32)
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The language of truth is unadorned and always simple.
Author: Marcellinus Ammianus
Source: None
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We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted.
Author: H. R. Halderman
Source: None
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The English language is rather like a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib.
Author: Robert Burchfield
Source: None
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To have another language is to possess a second soul.
Author: Charlemagne
Source: None
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The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
Author: George Eliot
Source: None
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Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons.
Author: Aldous Huxley
Source: None
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Those who know nothing of foreign languages, knows nothing of their own.
Author: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Source: None
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It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.
Author: Carl Sagan
Source: None
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Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes
Source: None
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Language is a form of human reason, which has its internal logic of which man knows nothing.
Author: Claude Levi-Strauss
Source: None
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When a language creates -- as it does -- a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.
Author: Christopher Ricks
Source: None
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The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.
Author: John Ruskin
Source: None
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The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
Author: George Bernard Shaw
Source: None
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Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.
Author: Walt Whitman
Source: None
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Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
Author: Robert Benchley
Source: None
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Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.
Author: Benjamin Lee Whorf
Source: None
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No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
Author: Henry Brooks Adams
Source: None
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I stand and listen to people speaking french in the stores and in the street. It's such a pert, crisp language, elegant as ruffling taffeta.
Author: Belva Plain
Source: None
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Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.
Author: Penelope Lively
Source: None
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I can remember the lush spring excitement of language in childhood. Sitting in church, rolling it around my mouth like marbles--tabernacle and pharisee and parable, tresspass and Babylon and covenant.
Author: Penelope Lively
Source: None
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Language helps form the limits of our reality.
Author: Dale Spender
Source: None
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And who in time knows whither we may vent the treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores this gain of our best glories shall be sent, 't unknowing Nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident may come refined with the accents that are ours?
Author: Samuel Daniel
Source: None
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For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His enemies have only to find it.
Author: Ambrose Bierce
Source: None
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Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.
Author: Elizabeth Bowen
Source: None
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Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Source: None
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