Aside from mastery in the fine arts, success in learning anything is the result of genuine interest and amount of energy dedicated to it.

Knowledge—like a nail—is made load-bearing by being driven in. If it's not driven deep enough, it will break when any weight is put upon it.

Whenever I read statistical reports, I try to imagine my unfortunate contemporary, the Average Person, who, according to these reports, has 0.66 children, 0.032 cars, and 0.046 TVs.

My view is that knowing languages is part of the process of becoming a cultured person.

It is a frequently cited fact that English has two sets of words for farm animals and their corresponding meats. The living animals are expressed with words of Germanic origin-calf (German 'Kalb'), swine (G. 'Schwein'), and ox (G. 'Ochse')-because the servants who guarded them were the conquered Anglo-Saxons. The names of the meats are of Romance origin-veal (French 'veau'), pork (F. 'porc') and beef (F. 'boeuf')-because those who enjoyed them were the conquering Norman masters.

Aside from mastery in the fine arts, success in learning anything is the result of genuine interest and amount of energy dedicated to it.

I feel such a difference between a philologist/linguist and a linguaphile as, say, a choreographer and a ballerina.