Language furnishes the best proof that a law accepted by a community is a thing that is tolerated and not a rule to which all freely consent.

Written forms obscure our view of language. They are not so much a garment as a disguise.

In general, the philological movement opened up countless sources relevant to linguistic issues, treating them in quite a different spirit from traditional grammar; for instance, the study of inscriptions and their language. But not yet in the spirit of linguistics.

Time changes all things; there is no reason why language should escape this universal law

The first of these phases is that of grammar, invented by the Greeks and carried on unchanged by the French. It never had any philosophical view of a language as such.

Linguistics will have to recognise laws operating universally in language, and in a strictly rational manner, separating general phenomena from those restricted to one branch of languages or another.

Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things.