“When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practical man relies on the language of the first.”

“Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.”

“Nature is a language and every new fact one learns is a new word; but it is not a language taken to pieces and dead in the dictionary, but the language put together into a most significant and universal sense. I wish to learn this language--not that I may know a new grammar, but that I may read the great book which is written in that tongue.”

“Eyes...They speak all languages.”

“The poets made all the words and therefore language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry.”

“If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.”

“It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”