Michel de Montaigne Quotes About Language
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There is no doubt that Greek and Latin are great and handsome ornaments, but we buy them too dear.
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And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them.
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I quote others only in order the better to express myself.
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An ancient father says that a dog we know is better company than a man whose language we do not understand.
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Just as in habiliments it is a sign of weakness to wish to make oneself noticeable by some peculiar and unaccustomed fashion, so, in language, the quest for new-fangled phrases and little-known words comes from a puerile and pedantic ambition.
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Our speech has its weaknesses and its defects, like all the rest. Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.
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What enriches language is its being handled and exploited by beautiful minds-not so much by making innovations as by expanding it through more vigorous and varied applications, by extending it and deploying it. It is not words that they contribute: what they do is enrich their words, deepen their meanings and tie down their usage; they teach it unaccustomed rhythms, prudently though and with ingenuity.
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