Famous quotes containing the words romance, languages, linguistic and/or features:
“The cowboy ... is well on his way to becoming a figure of magnificent proportions. Bowlegged and gaunt, he stands as the apotheosis of manly perfection. Songs, novels, movies, magazines, and operettas have made the least inquiring of us well acquainted with his extraordinary courage, unfailing gallantry, and uncanny skill with gun or lariat. The farmer, meanwhile, sits stolidly on his tractor, bereft of romance and adventure.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“The less sophisticated of my forbears avoided foreigners at all costs, for the very good reason that, in their circles, speaking in tongues was commonly a prelude to snake handling. The more tolerant among us regarded foreign languages as a kind of speech impediment that could be overcome by willpower.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“It is merely a linguistic peculiarity, not a logical fact, that we say “that is red” instead of “that reddens,” either in the sense of growing, becoming, red, or in the sense of making something else red.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)