Quotation of the Day
13th August 2019
“Today I remember no Greek. I have never read Latin for pleasure, and should now be hard put to it to compose a simple epitaph. But I do not regret my superficial classical studies. I believe that the conventional defence of them is valid; that only by them can a boy fullly understand that a sentence is a logical construction and that words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity. Those who have not been so taught — most Americans and most women — unless they are guided by some rare genius, betray their deprivation.The old-fashioned test of an English sentence — will it translate? — still stands after we have lost the trick of translation.”
— Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning, p. 139