Proto-Semitic Language - Comparative Vocabulary and Reconstructed Roots

Famous quotes containing the words comparative, vocabulary and/or roots:

“That hour in the life of a man when first the help of humanity fails him, and he learns that in his obscurity and indigence humanity holds him a dog and no man: that hour is a hard one, but not the hardest. There is still another hour which follows, when he learns that in his infinite comparative minuteness and abjectness, the gods do likewise despise him, and own him not of their clan.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)

“My vocabulary dwells deep in my mind and needs paper to wriggle out into the physical zone. Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle. I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

“A good word is as a good tree—
its roots are firm,
and its branches are in heaven;
it gives its produce every season
by the leave of its Lord.”
—Qur’An. Abraham 14:29-30, ed. Arthur J. Arberry (1955)