I can remember the lush spring excitement of language in childhood. Sitting in church, rolling it around my mouth like read more

I can remember the lush spring excitement of language in childhood. Sitting in church, rolling it around my mouth like marbles--tabernacle and pharisee and parable, tresspass and Babylon and covenant.

Language helps form the limits of our reality.

Language helps form the limits of our reality.

And who in time knows whither we may vent the treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores this gain read more

And who in time knows whither we may vent the treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores this gain of our best glories shall be sent, 't unknowing Nations with our stores? What worlds in the yet unformed Occident may come refined with the accents that are ours?

Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time,
place, and company.

Pedantry consists in the use of words unsuitable to the time,
place, and company.

For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His enemies read more

For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His enemies have only to find it.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before read more

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.