I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth.

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin,
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth.

Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises
one, slights the other.

Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises
one, slights the other.

. . . Philologists, who chase
A painting syllable through time and space
Start it at home, read more

. . . Philologists, who chase
A painting syllable through time and space
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's Ark.

But to the purpose--for we cite our faults
That they may hold excused our lawless lives;
And read more

But to the purpose--for we cite our faults
That they may hold excused our lawless lives;
And partly, seeing you are beautified
With goodly shape, and by your own report
A linguist, and a man of such perfection
As we do in our quality much want--

O, good my lord, no Latin!
I am not such a truant since my coming
As not read more

O, good my lord, no Latin!
I am not such a truant since my coming
As not to know the language I have lived in.
A strnage tongue makes my cause more strnage, suspicious.
Pray speak in English.

For though to smatter ends of Greek
Or Latin be the rhetoric
Of pedants counted, and vain-glorious,
read more

For though to smatter ends of Greek
Or Latin be the rhetoric
Of pedants counted, and vain-glorious,
To smatter French is meritorious.
- Samuel Butler (1),

Everything is Greek, when it is more shameful to be ignorant of
Latin.
[Lat., Omnia Graece!
read more

Everything is Greek, when it is more shameful to be ignorant of
Latin.
[Lat., Omnia Graece!
Cum sit turpe magis nostris nescire Latine.]

Besides 'tis known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak;
That Latin was no more read more

Besides 'tis known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak;
That Latin was no more difficile
That to a blackbird 'tis to whistle.

It is Hebrew to me.
[Fr., C'est de l'hebreu pour moi.]

It is Hebrew to me.
[Fr., C'est de l'hebreu pour moi.]