The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

Every quotation a nineteenth-century speaker or writer might want, grouped under its subject, with the author, the date and the source given as exactly as Hoyt could manage.

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Language: Quotations from Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

I have had my labour for my travail.— Shakespeare — Troilus and Cressida. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 72.
The labour we delight in physics pain.— Shakespeare — Macbeth. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 55.
Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation. Hal: 'tis no sin for a man to labour in his vocation.— Shakespeare — Henry IV. Pt. I. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 116.
Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.— DANIEL WEBSTER — Speech, April, 1824.
Well languag'd Danyel.— WILLIAM BROWNE — Britannia's Pastorals. Bk. II. Song 2. L. 303.
A Babylonish dialect Which learned pedants much affect.— BUTLER — Hudibras. Pt. I. Canto I. L. 93.
Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time, place, and company.— COLERIDGE — Biographia Literaria. Ch. 10.
*** Philologists, who chase A panting syllable through time and space, Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark, To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's Ark.— COWPER — Retirement. L. 691.
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone. и.— EMERSON — Letters and Social Aims.
Quotation and Originality. Language is fossil poetry.— EMERSON — Essays. The Poet.
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 only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.— SAM'L JOHNSON — Preface to his
X English Dictionary. Syllables govern the world.— JOHN SELDEN — Table Talk. Power.
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.— Shakespeare — Troilus and Cressida. Act IV. Sc. 5. L. 55.
He has strangled His language in his tears.— Shakespeare — Henry VIII. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 158.
O, but they say the tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony: Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain, For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. He that no more must say is listen'd more.— Shakespeare — Richard II. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 5.
Sweet smoke of rhetoric!— Shakespeare — Love's Labour's Lost. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 65.
There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture.— Shakespeare — Winter's Tale. Act V. Sc. 2. L.12.
Thou whoreson Zed! thou unnecessary letter!— Shakespeare — 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!— Shakespeare — Tempest. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 363.
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.
Edition 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.
Where nature's end of language is declined, And men talk only to conceal the mind.— YOUNG — Love of Fame. Satire II. L. 207.
Falsa orthographia, sive falsa grammatica, non vitiat concessionem. False spelling or false grammar does not vitiate a grant. Law Maxim. Negatas artifex sequi voces. He attempts to use language which he does not know.— PERSIUS — Satira. Prologue. XI.
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.
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.
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.
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