Romance Languages/linguistic Features

Famous quotes containing the words romance, languages, linguistic and/or features:

    The cowboy ... is well on his way to becoming a figure of magnificent proportions. Bowlegged and gaunt, he stands as the apotheosis of manly perfection. Songs, novels, movies, magazines, and operettas have made the least inquiring of us well acquainted with his extraordinary courage, unfailing gallantry, and uncanny skill with gun or lariat. The farmer, meanwhile, sits stolidly on his tractor, bereft of romance and adventure.
    —For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    It is merely a linguistic peculiarity, not a logical fact, that we say “that is red” instead of “that reddens,” either in the sense of growing, becoming, red, or in the sense of making something else red.
    John Dewey (1859–1952)

    All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)