“I learned to understand their language and to speak it a little.”
The Other World (1657)
Context: I learned to understand their language and to speak it a little. Immediately the news spread throughout the kingdom that two little wild men had been discovered. We were smaller than everybody else because the wilderness had provided us with such bad food. And it was a genetic defect that caused us to have forelimbs that weren't strong enough to support us.
This belief gained strength through repetition despite the priests of the country. They opposed it, saying that it was an awful impiety to believe that not only animals but monsters might be of the same species as they.
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Cyrano de Bergerac 57
French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist 1619–1655Related quotes

“If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue.”

Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache (1923), I, p. 56; as quoted in "Wittgenstein versus Mauthner: Two critiques of language, two mysticisms" (2007) by Elena Nájera http://wittgensteinrepository.org/agora-alws/article/view/2659/3042
Source: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

On an interview with the Catalan Autonomous Television, just before politically coallitioning with Catalan, Canarian and Basque nationalists
Source: L' Aznar destrossant la llengua catalana http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m95BZOKDPs, December 2006.
As quoted in Actor Jet Li Agreed To Star In ‘Mulan’ For His Daughter https://in.news.yahoo.com/actor-jet-li-agreed-star-045050431.html in Yahoo News (September 7, 2020)