English

“ A strong common sense, which it is not easy to unseat or disturb, marks the English mind for a thousand years: a rude strength newly applied to thought, as of sailors and soldiers who had lately learned to read. ”

“ All is so hard, material, positive. Yet there, amid the tangled ropes, fancy will behold—clustered like birds—poets and philosophers, history men and story men, annalists and legalists, English all, bound for the other side of the world, to rejoice it with their voices. ”

“ PREFACE. In so brief a history of so rich a literature, the problem is how to get room enough to give, not an adequate impression—that is impossible—but any impression at all of the subject. To do this I have crowded out everything but belles-lettres. Books in philosophy, history, science, etc., however important in the history of English thought, receive the merest incidental mention, or even no mention at all. ”

“ A language is but the instrument of those who use it; and English has flourished and spread not because of its own merits, many as they are, but because of the forthputting qualities of the masterful English stock. ”

“ English a Living Language
Our own is, of course, a living language still. It is therefore gaining and losing. It is a tree in which the vital sap is circulating yet, ascending from the roots into the branches; and as this works, new leaves are continually being put forth by it, old are dying and dropping away. I propose for the subject of my present lecture to consider some of the evidences of this life at work in it still. ”

“ Let it be admitted that at times he wrenches his English rather fiercely, and yet let it be said that for delicacy, strength, sincerity, clarity, and all great graces of style, he is side by side with the noblest of our prose writers. ”

“ We find, therefore, in their speeches, no large views, no generous and elevated sentiments, none of those appeals to the higher instincts of our nature, which are the crowning excellence of our English oratory. ”

“ In that greatest period of the race we do not know which is the greater, the daring energy, the enthusiastic impetuosity, the ability to govern, that the English then displayed, or the mighty sweep and range of the imagination as nobly revealed in their poetry. The works of the Elizabethan writers are with us, like the memory of the deeds of the Elizabethan adventurers, as evidence, if any was needful, that the peoples that speak English are of a truth poetic, that they are not prosaic. ”

“ It is our duty to do what we can to keep our English speech fresh and vigorous, to help it draw new life and power from every proper source, to resist all the attempts of pedants to cramp it and restrain its healthy growth, and to urge along the simplification of its grammar and its orthography, so that it shall be ready against the day when it is really a world-language. ”

“ I hope that our people may become in all these higher matters even as one people; and that the peculiar philosophic temperament, as well as the peculiar political temperament, that goes with our English speech may more and more pervade and influence the world. ”

“ A multitude of English, educated at the universities, bred into their society with manners, ability, and the gifts of fortune, are every day confronting the peers on a footing of equality, and outstripping them, as often, in the race of honor and influence. ”

“ Our book is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation. ”

“ The attention which has lately been given to the culture of the English language, by some who, in the character of critics or lexicographers, have laboured purposely to improve it, and by many others who, in various branches of knowledge, have tastefully adorned it with the works of their genius, has in a great measure redeemed it from that contempt in which it was formerly held in the halls of learning. ”

“ In addition to answering the original accusation, you have placed them under a new obligation, by giving to all, who read the English language, a work which, for literary ability and the lucid exposition of many difficult and abstruse points, forms an invaluable contribution to our literature. ”

“ To speak English correctly in a clear, pleasant voice, to read it intelligently and agreeably, to write it plainly and without ambiguity—this in itself would be a liberal culture, which few of us attain to. ”

“ yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. ”

“ I know of nothing in literature for which it is more impossible to give an adequate English equivalent than the intricate network of word-plays, quotations, and historical, literary, and scriptural allusions of which they consist. ”

“ And therefore the Purity of our Language consisteth in preserving this Character, in writing with the English Strength and Spirit: Let us not envy others, that they are more soft, diffused, and rarified; be it our Commendation to write as we pay in true Sterling; if we want Supplies, we had better revive old Words, than create new Ones. ”

“ Modern geography, modern history, modern literature; the English language as a language; the whole circle of the sciences, physical, moral, and social, are even more completely ignored in the higher than in the lower schools. ”

“ That which I have endeavored to explain at length is thus tacitly acknowledged to be correct through the use of this term, which implies that it is the English tongue which makes these peoples one in sentiment, in feeling, in their aims and purposes, as it makes them one in their physical appearance, their motions, the exercise of their faculties and functions, etc. ”

“ Most of the classical citations you shall hear or read in the current journals or speeches were not drawn from the originals, but from previous quotations in English books; ”

“ The English is admirable; there is great freshness and vigour in the descriptions of scenery and character, and in the narrative there is abundance of invention, and many of the situations are extremely dramatic.... ”

“ So it is with one who gathers words, loving them. Particular words remain associated with important occasions in the learner's mind. I could thus write a history of my English vocabulary that should be at the same time an account of my comings and goings, my mistakes and my triumphs, during the years of my initiation. ”

“ The tone of things is somehow heavier than with us; manners and modes are more absolute and positive; they seem to swarm and to thicken the atmosphere about you. Morally and physically it is a denser air than ours. We seem loosely hung together at home as compared with the English, every man of whom is a tight fit in his place. ”

“ We have modified the common language far less than we have modified the common law. We have kept alive here many a word and many a meaning which was well worthy of preservation, and which our kin across the seas had permitted to perish. Professor Earle of Oxford, in his comprehensive volume on ‘English Prose,’ praises American authors for refreshing old words by novel combinations. ”

“ Such a definition, though it cuts out the greater part of human records, is still too broad for our purpose, and again we must limit it by a process of exclusion. For to study almost any period of English letters is to discover that it produced hundreds of books which served the purpose of literature, if only for a season, by affording pleasure to readers. ”

“ To judge from a single conversation, he made the impression of a narrow and very English mind; of one who paid for his rare elevation by general tameness and conformity. Off his own beat, his opinions were of no value. ”

“ View'd 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. ”

“ All forms of literature will be represented, including fiction, belles lettres, poetry, philosophy, social and economic discussion, history, biography, etc.; and special attention will be paid to authors whose works have not hitherto been accessible in English. ”

“ There can be no rational doubt, I think, that the English language has gained, and is gaining, enormously by its expansion over the American continent. The prime function of a language, after all, is to interpret the ‘form and pressure’ of life—the experience, knowledge, thought, emotion, and aspiration of the race which employs it. ”

“ If any one among us have a facility or purity more than ordinary in his Mother Tongue, it is owing to Chance, or his Genius, or any thing, rather than to his Education or any care of his Teacher. To Mind what English his Pupil speaks or writes is below the Dignity of one bred up amongst Greek and Latin, though he have but little of them himself. ”

“ To understand the power of performance that is in their finest wits, in the patient Newton, or in the versatile transcendent poets, or in the Dugdales, Gibbons, Hallams, Eldons, and Peels, one should see how English day-laborers hold out. ”

“ If we know what a man means, and if his usage is in accordance with that of a large number of intelligent and educated people, it cannot justly be called incorrect. For language rests, at bottom, on convention or agreement, and what a large body of reputable people recognize as a proper word or a proper meaning [Pg 100] of a word cannot be denied its right to a place in the English vocabulary. ”

“ The spirit and essence of Englishism, if I may so call it--that which marks our distinctive character, that which renders all we do so progressive, and at the same time so permanent--is the system, or principle, or habit--call it what you will--of small communities acting together, in some things separate from, in some things dependent upon, the great mass of the nation. ”

“ Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language. ”

“ The English language is the tool of the peoples who speak English and who have made it to fit their hands. They have fashioned it to suit their own needs, and it is quite as characteristic as anything else these same peoples have made—quite as characteristic as the common law and as parliamentary government. ”

“ There is much cause for gratification in the evidences of a growing appreciation, in all quarters, of the place due to spoken English, as a study to be taught continuously side by side with written English. ”

“ Even more important than this third class of slang expressions is the fourth, containing the terms which are, so to speak, serving their apprenticeship, and as yet uncertain whether or not they will be admitted finally into the gild of good English. These terms are either useful or useless; they either satisfy a need or they do not; they therefore live or die according to the popular appreciation of their value. ”

“ How many grammars tell us, that, "The first person is the person who speaks;" that, "The second person is the person spoken to;" and that, "the third person is the person spoken of!" As if the three persons of a verb, or other part of speech, were so many intelligent beings! ”

“ The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything. ”

“ But who is so destitute of good sense as to deny, that a graceful and easy conversation in the private circle, a fluent and agreeable delivery in public speaking, a ready and natural utterance in reading, a pure and elegant style in composition, are accomplishments of a very high order? ”

“ Later he learned that the great writers of England and America were concerned with life alone, as the most familiar, the most mysterious, the most fascinating thing in the world, and that the only valuable or interesting feature of any work of literature is its vitality. ”

“ They were pleasant to live with, and above the average of students--German, French, English, or what not--but chiefly because each individual appeared satisfied to stand alone. It seemed a sign of force; ”

“ Our writers have laid many languages under contribution, and thus furnished an abundance of irregular words, necessary to be explained, but never to be acknowledged as English till they conform to our own rules. ”

“ It must rise and fall with us who speak it. “No speech can do more than express the ideas of those who employ it at the time,” so a recent historian of our language has reminded us. “It cannot live upon its past meanings, or upon the past conceptions of great men that have been recorded in it, any more than the race which uses it can live upon its past glory or its past achievements.” ”