Grammar is not a set of rules; it is something inherent in the language, and language cannot exist without it. It can be discovered, but not invented.

An amoeba is a formless thing which takes many shapes. It moves by thrusting out an arm, and flowing into the arm. It multiplies by pulling itself in two, without permanently diminishing the original. So with words. A meaning may develop on the periphery of the body of meanings associated with a word, and shortly this tentacle-meaning has grown to such proportions that it dwarfs all other meanings.

You and I who read and write books have very little effect upon language. We may think about it, write about it, and read about it, but it goes on without us, or in spite of us.

Amoebas, once they have themselves well pulled in two, go their ways-they practice divorce, but no remarriage.

The great arbiters of language are the women who speak it in the presence of children... What the women pass on to the next generation is "right" and what they do not bother to pass on to their children sooner or later becomes "wrong.

Quite naturally, scholars assumed that Latin grammar was not merely Latin grammar, but that it was grammar itself. They borrowed it and made the most of it.

Jazz was formerly a crude term for indulging in an action which in polite society is referred to, if at all, only with such vague Latin terms as intercourse and cohabitation.