Grammar Quotes

• Grammar is to a writer what anatomy is to a sculptor, or the scales to a musician. You may loathe it, it may bore you, but nothing will replace it, and once mastered it will support you like a rock.

  B. J. Chute

  Writing, Support You, Bores You

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• Grammar is the analysis of language.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Writing, Analysis, Language

  Edgar Allan Poe (2014). “Complete Collection of Edgar Allan Poe - 170+ eBooks (Complete Tales, Poems, Novels, Essays, Miscellaneous, Play)”, p.1305, Ageless Reads

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• Grammar is the grave of letters.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Letters, Graves

  Elbert Hubbard, Bert Hubbard (1923). “Selected writings of Elbert Hubbard: his mintage of wisdom, coined from a life of love, laughter and work”

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• Grammar is not a set of rules; it is something inherent in the language, and language cannot exist without it. It can be discovered, but not invented.

  Charlton Laird

  Language, Inherent

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• Grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules; it is a compact between people who wish to understand each other.

  Robert Breault

  People, Wish, Arbitrary

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• The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Sports, Golf, Games

  Letter on May 15, 1925. "Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917 - 1961", book edited by Carlos Baker, 1981.

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• Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.

  Richard Chenevix Trench

  Writing, Editing, English Grammar

  Richard Chenevix Trench (1867). “On the Study of Words Lectures Addressed (originally) to the Pupils at the Diocesan Training-school, Winchester by Richard Chenevix Trench”, p.22

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• Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

  E. B. White

  Inspiring, Faith, Writing

  William Strunk Jr., E.B. White (1962). “the Elements of Style”

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• Grammar, which knows how to control even kings.

  Moliere

  Kings, Know How, Knows

  Les Femmes Savantes act 2, sc. 6 (1672)

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• Once the grammar has been learned, writing is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.

  Beryl Bainbridge

  Writing, Talking, Paper

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• It's like learning a language; you can't speak a language fluently until you find out who you are in that language, and that has as much to do with your body as it does with vocabulary and grammar.

  Fred Frith

  Vocabulary, Doe, Body

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• 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.

  Bill Bryson

  Latin, Simple, English Grammar

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• I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Talking, Luck, Posterity

  Said while correcting proofs of his last Parliamentary speech, 31 March 1881, in Robert Blake 'Disraeli' (1966) ch. 32

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• Do not be surprised when those who ignore the rules of grammar also ignore the law. After all, the law is just so much grammar.

  Robert Breault

  English Grammar, Law

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• Women are the simple, and poets the superior, artisans of language... the intervention of grammarians is almost always bad.

  Remy de Gourmont

  Simple, Language, Poet

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• Grammar, which can govern even Kings.

  Moliere

  Kings

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• Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Cat, Fighting

  Mark Twain (2015). “A Tramp Abroad: Mark Twain's Collections”, p.9, 谷月社

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• At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Time, Pain, Reading

  "The Barretts at Hope End: the early diary of Elizabeth Barrett Browning".

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• When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the position of the particles, etc., etc... I see that they forget that the first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Expression, Style, Firsts

  Henry David Thoreau (1999). “Uncommon Learning: Thoreau on Education”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

  Louis Aragon

  Book, People, Style

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• Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Giving, Brain, Intelligence

  'She Stoops to Conquer' (1773) act 1, sc. 1, song

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• The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.

  Michel de Montaigne

  World, Problem, Trouble

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• I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Beer, Men

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• Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.

  Jack Lynch

  Communication, Style, Pepsi

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• 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

  Mother, Father, Writing

  Henry David Thoreau (2006). “Thoreau and the Art of Life: Precepts and Principles”, p.13, Heron Dance Press

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