The English
- (Just the raw, unpoetic English, simply for comprehension)
O most learned of the descendants of Romulus,
as many there are and as many as there were, Marcus Tullius,
or as many as there will be later in years,
Catullus gives you great thanks,
the worst of all poets,
by as much the worst poet of all,
as you the best lawyer/patron of all.
Read more about this topic: Catullus 49
Famous quotes containing the word english:
“Bourbon’s the only drink. You can take all that champagne stuff and pour it down the English Channel. Well, why wait 80 years before you can drink the stuff? Great vineyards, huge barrels aging forever, poor little old monks running around testing it, just so some woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma can say it tickles her nose.”
—John Michael Hayes (b.1919)
“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)