A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas...

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.

It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.

The business, task or object of the scientific study of languages will if possible be 1) to trace the history of all known languages. Naturally this is possible only to a very limited extent and for very few languages.

Of all social institutions language is least amenable to initiative. It blends with the life of society, and the latter, inert by nature, is a prime conservative force.

A language presupposes that all the individual users possess the organs.

Within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage: these are syntagmatic relations, of which I have spoken.