Earliest Recorded Usage

Famous quotes containing the words earliest, recorded and/or usage:

    “I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing—it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.”
    —Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)

    “Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has, and to declare them openly is rather like facing a psychoanalyst.”
    —Italo Calvino (1923–1985)

    “I am using it [the word ‘perceive’] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”
    —A.J. (Alfred Jules)