Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Language
Well languag’d Danyel.
William Browne—Britannia’s Pastorals. Bk. II. Song 2. L. 303.
Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company.
Coleridge—Biographia Literaria. Ch. X.
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?
Sam. Daniel—Musophilus. Last lines.
Who climbs the grammar-tree, distinctly knows
Where noun, and verb, and participle grows.
Dryden—Sixth Satire of Juvenal. L. 583.
Language is fossil poetry.
Emerson—Essays. The Poet.
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone.
Emerson—Letters and Social Aims. Quotation and Originality.
And don’t confound the language of the nation
With long-tailed words in osity and ation.
J. Hookham Frere—King Arthur and his Round Table. Introduction. St. 6.
Language is the only instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.
Samuel Johnson—Preface to his English Dictionary.
L’accent du pays où l’on est né demeure dans l’esprit et dans le cœur comme dans le langage.
The accent of one’s country dwells in the mind and in the heart as much as in the language.
La Rochefoucauld—Maximes. 342.
Writ in the climate of heaven, in the language spoken by angels.
Longfellow—The Children of the Lord’s Supper. L. 262.
La grammaire, qui sait régenter jusqu’aux rois,
Et les fait, la main haute, obéir à ses lois.
Grammar, which knows how to lord it over kings, and with high hands makes them obey its laws.
Molière—Les Femmes Savantes. II. 6.
Une louange en grec est d’une merveilleuse efficace à la tête d’un livre.
A laudation in Greek is of marvellous efficacy on the title-page of a book.
Molière—Preface. Les Précieuses Ridicules.
L’accent est l’âme du discours, il lui donne le sentiment et la vérité.
Accent is the soul of a language; it gives the feeling and truth to it.
Rousseau—Emile. I.
Syllables govern the world.
John Selden—Table Talk. Power.
He has strangled
His language in his tears.
Henry VIII. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 158.
Thou whoreson Zed! thou unnecessary letter!
King Lear. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 66.
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!
Tempest. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 363.
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.
Troilus and Cressida. Act IV. Sc. 5. L. 55.
There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture.
Winter’s Tale. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 12.
Ego sum rex Romanus, et supra grammaticam.
I am the King of Rome, and above grammar.
Sigismund. At the Council of Constance. (1414). To a prelate who objected to his grammar.
Don Chaucer, well of English undefyled
On Fame’s eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.
Spenser—Faerie Queene. IV. 2. 32.
Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language.
Noah Webster—Preface to Dictionary. Ed. of 1828.
From purest wells of English undefiled
None deeper drank than he, the New World’s Child,
Who in the language of their farm field spoke
The wit and wisdom of New England folk.
Whittier—James Russell Lowell.
Oft on the dappled turf at ease
I sit, and play with similes,
Loose type of things through all degrees.
Wordsworth—To the Daisy.