“On the eastern coast, Hc sunt Dracones must refer to the Dagroians of Marco Polo”
“How astonishing that, in a language we no longer know precisely how to pronounce, a poet or various poets whose faces and characters we cannot conceive, who lived in a society of whose customs and beliefs we have but a very vague idea, described for us our own lives today, with every secret happiness and [...]
OTP
(Via The ever enlightening publishers of the Field Book series.)
“Martlemas, the feast of St. Martin , celebrated on November 11″
“Mes Reverends Peres, mes lettres n’avaient pas accoutume de se suivre de si pres, ni d’etre si etendues. Le peu de temps que j’ai eu a ete cause de l’un et de l’autre. Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.”
“Fiorello LaGuardia’s favorite put-down for egghead bureaucrats who got in his way was ’semicolon boy.’ “
MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 5
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his [...]
Readings of early English
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946: “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as [...]