Modern English: Its Growth and Present Use |
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Popular passages
Page 194 - They rowed her in across the rolling foam — The cruel, crawling foam." The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the
Page 276 - I LIKE to meet a sweep ; understand me, — not a grown sweeper, (old chimney-sweepers are by no means attractive,) but one of those tender novices, blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from the cheek : such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes sounding like the peep peep of a young sparrow...
Page 261 - You must either be house-Wives, or house-Moths ; remember that. In the deep sense, you must either weave men's fortunes, and embroider them ; or feed upon, and bring them to decay.
Page 319 - The principal design of a Grammar of any Language," says Lowth, "is to teach us to express ourselves with propriety in that Language; and to enable us to judge of every phrase and form of construction, whether it be right or not.
Page 129 - And he came to Capernaum : and being in the house he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way ? 34 But they held their peace : for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest. 35 And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.
Page 230 - He koude songes make, and wel endite, Juste, and eek daunce, and weel purtreye and write.
Page 235 - I doubted that it sholde not please some gentylmen whiche late blamed me, sayeng that in my translacyons I had ouer curyous termes whiche coude not be vnderstande of comyn peple, and desired me to vse olde and homely termes in my translacyons; and fayn wolde I satysfye...
Page 326 - Language ... is not an abstract construction of the learned or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground.
Page 269 - This superiority of specific expressions is clearly due to a saving of the effort required to translate words into thoughts. As we do not think in generals but in particulars — as, whenever any class of things is referred to, we represent it to ourselves by calling to mind individual members of it...
Page 271 - The word racial is an ugly word, the strangeness of which is due to our instinctive feeling that the termination •al has no business at the end of a word that is not obviously Latin.