“…Being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell — a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great — was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing — namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis… Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence — which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage. Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English.
I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for would be not knowing English. I would whip them hard for that.”
-Winston Churchill
Among the Greeks, thyme denoted the graceful elegance of the Attic style, because it covered Mount Hymettus and gave the aromatic flavour, of which the ancients were to fond of, to the honey made there. “To smell of thyme” was, therefore, a commendation bestowed on those writers who had made themselved masters of the Attic style.
— Louise Cortambert, The Language of Flowers.
Eloquent: having or exercising the power of fluent, forceful, and appropriate speech; movingly expressive.
Carl Sagan is so damn eloquent. Currently, I’m reading “Cosmos,” and at some points, when reading over all his historical and astronomical information, I’ll just stop and marvel at how he conveys it all. It hardly compares to the bullet-pointed lectures of Astronomy 103 I attended last fall that I had a time keeping up with, and occasionally had trouble staying awake during. Sagan prompted me to take the class, not just the Quantitative Reasoning B course requirement. His story “Contact” is one of my absolute favorites; the book and the film adaptation. I think I’ll post my favorite passage from the text later.
This is a quality review from The Cleveland Plain Dealer that shares my sentiments: “Cosmos is like the college course in science you always wanted tot take but never knew a professor could teach. It’s magnificent. Sagan writes beautifully… With a lyrical literary style, and a range that touches almost all aspects of human knowledge, Cosmos often seems too good to be true.”
The accompanying television series is just as captivating, and the man is gifted with a voice that goes with his words. However many times he says “billions and billions,” it never gets old. I’m able to sit down and watch an episode and completely space out (pun intended) aboard the “Ship of the Imagination.”
But as a writer, I think I appreciate the book more, and my copy possesses sentences underlined- those not containing any particular fact to be remembered, but beautiful combinations of words befitting a brilliant universe.
Today I read “…There is a continuous gradation from triple systems through loose clusters of a few dozen stars to the great globular clusters resplendent with a million suns.” I stopped and underlined resplendent with a million suns.
I did the same to “Human beings, born ultimately of stars…”
