Indian Language

Famous quotes containing the words indian and/or language:

    In the woods of Powhatan,
    Still ‘tis told by Indian fires
    How a daughter of their sires
    Saved a captive Englishman.
    William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)

    The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)