W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

Grammar is the grave of letters.

Grammar is the analysis of language.

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin - a language with which it has precious little in common. In Latin, to take one example, it is not possible to split an infinitive. So in English, the early authorities decided, it should not be possible to split an infinitive either. But there is no reason why we shouldn't, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren't available to the Romans.

English grammar is so complex and confusing for the one very simple reason that its rules and terminology are based on Latin, a language with which it has precious little in common.

Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.

I much preferred Latin to Greek. I loved the language being such a pattern that you could not shift a word without the whole sentence falling to pieces.

The business, task or object of the scientific study of languages will if possible be 1) to trace the history of all known languages. Naturally this is possible only to a very limited extent and for very few languages.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

Language is always evolving. It's difficult to read Shakespeare now because language has shifted. Similarly, kids these days can get to the point really quick in about 140 characters or less because of these new tools.

You wouldn't believe the kind of hate mail I get about my work on irregular verbs.

The way that words fit together is always interesting to me. I love words.

Speakers of English love to invent and reinvent the language.

. . . the fact that [English] has shed most of the old grammatical forms which time has rendered useless and scarcely intelligible, has made English a model, pointing the way which must be followed in building the Interlanguage. . .

Language is the crowning achievement of human beings, and that is something Muslims have always known and revered. We are a literate people whose miracle is a Book from an unlettered man, peace and blessings be upon him, who was the most articulate and eloquent human being who ever lived. We honor our Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in honoring language that he loved so much and used so well.

It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.

Language. By this we build pyramids, fight battles, ordain and administer laws, shape and teach religion, and knit man to man, cultivate each other, and ourselves.

Gosh. The subjunctive is always the first to go.

The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German. from "Disappearance of Literature

In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger.

Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.

Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.

We must plow through the whole of language.

...language is not the frosting, it's the cake.

Logic is to grammar what the sense of words is to their sound.