"Language, in connection with reason, to which it gives its proper activity use and ornament, raises man above the lower orders of animals and in proportion as it is polished and refined, contributes greatly, with other causes, to exalt one nation above another, in the scale of civilization and intellectual dignity."—Anon
"Our language is a part, and a most important part, of our country. * * * * Nobody who is aware how a nation's feelings and opinions, and whatever characterizes it, are interwoven with its language by myriads of imperceptible fibres, will run the risk of severing them. Nobody who has a due reverence for * * * * his own spiritual being, which has been mainly trained and fashioned by his native language—nobody who rightly appreciates what a momentous thing it is to keep the unity of a people entire and unbroken, to preserve and foster all its national recollections, what a glorious and inestimable blessing it is to 'speak the tongue that Shakspeare spake,' will ever wish to trim that tongue according to any arbitrary theory."—Rev. J. C. Hare.
"So may we hope to be ourselves guardians of its purity, and not corrupters of it; to introduce, it may be, others into an intelligent knowledge of that with which we shall have ourselves more than a merely superficial acquaintance—to bequeath it to those who come after us not worse than we received it ourselves."—Dean Trench.
