Words; Their Use and Abuse

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold, Alike fantastic if too new or old; Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.--POPE.

To the thoughtful man, who has reflected on the common operations of life, which, but for their commonness, would be deemed full of marvel, few things are more wonderful than th...

Language is the depository of the accumulated body of experience, to which all former ages have contributed their part, and which is the inheritance of all yet to come.--J. S. M...

Words are the signs and symbols of things; and as in accounts, ciphers and symbols pass for real sums, so, in the course of human affairs, words and names pass for things themse...

One vague inflection spoils the whole with doubt; One trivial letter ruins all, left out; A knot can choke a felon into clay; A knot will save him, spelt without the k; The smal...

The more you have studied foreign languages, the more you will be disposed to keep Ollendorff in the background; the proper result of such acquirements is visible in a finer ear...

If reputation attend these conquests which depend on the fineness and niceties of words, it is no wonder if the wit of men so employed should perplex and subtilize the significa...

Among the books that need to be written, one of the most instructive would be a treatise on the history and influence of nicknames. Philosophers who study the great events in th...

Among the crotchets of Sterne’s dialectician, Walter Shandy, was a theory regarding the importance of Christian names in determining the future behavior and destiny of the child...

Altogether the style of a writer is a faithful representative of his mind; therefore if any man wish to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts; and if he wo...

Is not cant the _materia prima_ of the Devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves; from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself prope...

The old Roman poet Ennius was so proud of knowing three languages that he used to declare that he had three hearts. The Emperor Charles V expressed himself still more strongly,...

I cannot admire the constant use of French or Latin words, instead of your own vernacular. My Anglo-Saxon feelings are wounded to the quick ... by such words as _chagrin_ instea...

Our blunted senses can no more realize the original delicacy of the appellative faculty, than they can attain to the keen perfection in which they still exist in the savage.--LE...

Where do the words of Greece and Rome excel, That England may not please the ear as well? What mighty magic’s in the place or air, That all perfection needs must centre there?--...

expressiveness,--entitles them, therefore, to be regarded as the appropriate language, the mother-tongue of passion; and hence the effect of good acting depends largely on the p...

Among the various forms of ingratitude, one of the commonest is that of kicking down the ladder by which one has climbed the steeps of celebrity; and a good illustration of this...