Famous quotes containing the words older, standard and/or definition:
“As for farming, I am convinced that my genius dates from an older era than the agricultural. I would at least strike my spade into the earth with such careless freedom but accuracy as the woodpecker his bill into a tree.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“This unlettered mans speaking and writing are standard English. Some words and phrases deemed vulgarisms and Americanisms before, he has made standard American; such as It will pay. It suggests that the one great rule of compositionand if I were a professor of rhetoric I should insist on thisis, to speak the truth. This first, this second, this third; pebbles in your mouth or not. This demands earnestness and manhood chiefly.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”
—William James (18421910)