A Quote by Edwin Percy Whipple
Felicity, not fluency of language, is a merit.
Related Quotes
Contrary to the negative stereotype that folks who swear have poor vocabularies, a fluency in taboo language correlates with overall verbal fluency. The more words you know, the more you know... and the more colorfully you can express yourself, with nuance, metaphor, and emotion.
Fluency in even one other language would be fantastic.
I have never been particularly good with languages. Despite a dozen years of Hebrew school and a lifetime of praying in the language, I'm ashamed to admit that I still can't read an Israeli newspaper. Besides English, the only language I speak with any degree of fluency is Spanish.
It's funny because 'Felicity' didn't have a huge following, but the following it did have is hugely devoted, so people who are fanatics about 'Felicity' would run up to me all the time. I'd be at a bar, and someone will go, 'Hey, were you on Felicity? ...' I loved doing the show.
I owe my own fluency with language to Brooklyn. Everyone talked about everything, from the Dodgers to the revolution.
Fluency can be a sign that nothing is happening; fluency can actually be my signal to stop, while being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on.
Fluency is the developmental process that connects decoding with everything we know about words to make the meaning of the text come to life. Fluency is a wonderful bridge to comprehension and to a life-long love of reading.
An everlasting tranquility is, in my imagination, the highest possible felicity, because I know of no felicity on earth higher than that which a peaceful mind and contented heart afford.
I also had this mistaken dream, fantasy really - perhaps because I'm good at languages - of being able in both Italy and France to become someone else through my fluency in the language.
It may sound paradoxical, but verbal fluency is the product of many hours spent writing about nothing, just as musical fluency is the product of hours spent repeating scales.
Since I have difficulty defining merit and what merit alone means - and in any context, whether it's judicial or otherwise - I accept that different experiences in and of itself, bring merit to the system.
If merit is not recognised, still it is merit, and it ought to be honoured as such; but if it is rewarded, it becomes valuable in the eyes of all, and everybody is encouraged to pursue that course in which merit obtains its due reward.
There is a fluency and an ease with which true mastery and expertise always expresses itself, whether it be in writing, whether it be in a mathematical proof, whether it be in a dance that you see on stage, really in every domain. But I think the question is, you know, where does that fluency and mastery come from?
The chief merit of language is clearness.
Language can never 'pin down' slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity, is in its reach toward the ineffable.
Mere bashfulness without merit is awkward; and merit without modesty, insolent. But modest merit has a double claim to acceptance, and generally meets with as many patrons as beholders.
Related Authors
Clement Greenberg Quotes
American
Essayist
Dinty W. Moore Quotes
American
Essayist
Dominique Bouhours Quotes
French
Essayist
Frederick Crews Quotes
American
Essayist
Judith Sargent Murray Quotes
American
Essayist
Mark Riebling Quotes
American
Essayist
Moses Harvey Quotes
Irish
Essayist
Pablo Antonio Cuadra Quotes
Nicaraguan
Essayist
Philip Connors Quotes
American
Essayist
Scott Bradfield Quotes
American
Essayist
Sven Birkerts Quotes
American
Essayist
Wendy C. Ortiz Quotes
American
Essayist
William George Jordan Quotes
American
Essayist