“Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us, not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express.”
Page 14.
A Grammar of the English Language (1818)
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William Cobbett58
English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist 1763–1835Related quotes
L. P. Jacks (1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Context: Of all the media of expression employed by man (and let us never forget that they are many) none are so unstable, none so quick to change their meaning, as words. Even sculpture, architecture, painting, in their noblest works, speak differently under different conditions; but these arts are relatively immortal compared with speech.
Witold Doroszewski (1899–1976) Lexicographer and linguist
Witold Doroszewski, Z zagadiiien leksykografii polskiej [Selected Problems of Polish Lexicography], Warszawa 1954, p. 93; as cited in Schaff (1962;6).
Henry Alford (1810–1871) English churchman, theologian, textual critic, scholar, poet, hymnodist, and writer
The New Testament for English Readers (1865), Romans 8:26, p. 73, footnote.
Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something
Why do I say this? Faith in a Divine Being, in the Almighty, is the great moving power that can change our lives. With it comes the only lasting comfort and peace of mind. God is our Eternal Father, and He lives. I don't understand the wonder of His majesty; I can't comprehend His glory. But I know that He is intensely interested in our welfare and involved in our lives, that I can speak with Him in prayer, and that He will hear and listen.
Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.
Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
Source: 1850s, Attack upon Christendom (1855), p. 121