Famous quotes containing the words english, song and/or originally:
“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springth the wude nu--
Sing cuccu!”
—Anonymous. Cuckoo Song (c. 1250)
“Our institutions have a potent digestion, and may in time convert and assimilate to good all elements thrown in, however originally alien.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)