It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.
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For a long time I found the celebrities of modern painting and poetry ridiculous. I loved absurd pictures, fanlights, stage scenery, mountebanks backcloths, inn-signs, cheap colored prints; unfashionable literature, church Latin, pornographic books badly spelt, grandmothers novels, fairy stories, little books for children, old operas, empty refrains, simple rhythms.
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You send your child to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the schoolboys who educate him. You send him to the Latin class, but much of his tuition com...
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One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
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The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin.
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Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.
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Ah, yes, divorce...from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet
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First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.
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One attraction of Latin is that you can immerse yourself in the poems of Horace and Catullus without fretting over how to say, Have a nice day.
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I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country [England], that man lives by Greek and Latin alone; that is, by knowing a great ...
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I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.
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Etymology, n.:
Some early etymological scholars come up with derivations that were hard for the public to believe. The term 'etymology' was formed from the Latin 'etus' ('eaten'), the root 'mal' ('bad'), and 'logy' ('study of'). It meant 'the study of things that are hard to swallow.'
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I am astonished each time I come to the U.S. by the ignorance of a high percentage of the population, which knows almost nothing about Latin America or about the world. It's quite blind and deaf to anything that may happen outside the frontiers of the U.S.
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encouraged and pleased to see that the countries of Latin America stood up for human rights and democracy in their own region, especially with regard to Cuba.
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'T is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine stump. With it comes a Latin ...
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To survive there, you need the ambition of a Latin-American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony.
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Vulnerant omnia, ultima necat. (All the hours wound you, the last one kills)
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Deliberate often--decide once.
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It is the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not to skin it.
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It is easier to pull down than to build up.
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There is a negative proof of the value of Latin No one seems to boast of not knowing it.
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Fear not a jest. If one throws salt at you, you will not be harmed unless you have sore places.
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He fishes well who uses a golden hook.
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If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.
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If there is no wind, row.
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To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.
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Ah, yes, divorce... from the Latin word meaning 'to rip a man's heart out through his wallet'.
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Love is a kind of military service.
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Never give a child a sword.
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Be on your guard against a silent dog and still water.
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