(57 quotes found)
“I don't know the rules of grammar. If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language.”
David Ogilvy
“The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax”
Thomas Paine
“Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning; Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning”
Oliver Goldsmith
“I am the King of Rome, and above grammar”
Emperor Sigismund
“When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural, as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb's bleat.”
Henry David Thoreau
“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. Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football. It is a patent absurdity. But once this insane notion became established, grammarians found themselves having to draw up ever more complicated and circular arguments to accommodate the inconsistencies.”
Bill Bryson
“Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation Then, in your exuberance and bounding energy you say you're going to add to that. Then you add rhyme and meter. And your delight is in that power.”
Robert Frost
“I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on the simple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad.”
Bernadette Devlin
“Good grammar develops over time, so relax and put down the red pen. Kids need to make mistakes in writing to move toward correctness. They freeze up if they think you'll pounce on every error. You want your daughters to keep writing, since this is the best way for them to develop strong usage skills.”
Jeff Anderson
“I don't want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady”
George Bernard Shaw
