Your Quote of the Day

Shakespeare was dealing with the spoken word in the main and that contains other means of communication than the words.

The written word requires some rules and when used for legal means some very definite ones in case some upstart jack-rabbit starts weaving the winds as upstart jack-rabbits are wont to do.

There has to be a framework from which to work, or else chaos reigns. Bending the rules allows evolution of language.

Matthew Arnold has a piece on the matter in Essays in Criticism. It discusses the reasons for not setting up an official language standards agency (OLSA) in England as the French had done with their Academy.

I go on what makes me laugh and proper language does it best. It's the perfect vehicle for cynics. They can say things which populist language has difficulties with.

I have posted a couple of examples recently. One on the digestion process for the foodies and the speech by Cardinal Somebody-or-other at an American university (as good an excuse for a jaunt as there is), on where we are going wrong and what should be done about it.

I have the book somewhere. I liked the essay on Joubert best.

I got that wrong. Somebody else (Walt) posted the speech of Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich. I commented on it.

The Semi Colon thread. (Or head half way up arse).

“In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.”
― Haruki Murakami in his novel, Sputnik Sweetheart

Count to a Trillion (2011)

"Your awkwardness excites me my darling".

Frank Harris to a young lady who he had picked up on a train apologising for getting her toe fast in the corsets when doffing off.

It's really tough to get shed of those old canards, isn't it, Ed? This sounds like it came right out of Sister Petra's mouth, or any other wag who spent whole careers teaching nothing.

Of course there's a framework. That framework contains millions of real rules but it isn't the framework you have in mind. It's the one that you, and every other native speaker of any language, has by age 5.

“To be homeward bound, no matter what tragic memories you have harbored, is unlike any voyage a man can ever make.”
― Leon Uris, Redemption

You didn't understand, Spendi.

Look who's talking!!!

How's the ole coward doin'?

What did I not understand?

It's a formal rule of communication that assertions of that nature are backed up by some substance.

What grammatical faults do you see in the Sonnets or Venus and Adonis?

You should read Sterne on Hobby Horses JT.

“Beware the man of a single book.”
― St. Thomas Aquinas

"You can't always get what you want...but if you try sometimes you just might find... you get what you need" Mick Jagger

"remember, we are eternal. all this pain is an illusion" - Tool "lateralus"

and every Saturday we work in the yard. Pick up the dog doo, hope that it's hard...

Joe Walsh

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

Lord Acton,

it wasn't "lateralus", it's from "parabol/parabola"

THE NAME'S BOND...IONIC BOND

saw this on a tee shirt in Newark