Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyts New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Linguists
Besides tis known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak; That Latin was no more difficile Than to a blackbird tis to whistle. ButlerHudibras. Pt. I. Canto I. L. 51.
For though to smatter ends of Greek Or Latin be the rhetoric Of pedants counted, and vain-glorious, To smatter French is meritorious. ButlerRemains in Verse and Prose. Satire. Upon Our Ridiculous Imitation of the French. Line 127. A Greek proverb condemns the man of two tongues.
* * * Philologists, who chase A panting syllable through time and space Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark, To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noahs Ark. CowperRetirement. L. 691.
Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiss nichts von seiner eigenen. He who is ignorant of foreign languages, knows not his own. GoetheKunst und Alterthum.
Omnia Græce! Cum sit turpe magis nostris nescire Latine. Everything is Greek, when it is more shameful to be ignorant of Latin. JuvenalSatires. VI. 187. (Second line said to be spurious.)
Languages are no more than the keys of Sciences. He who despises one, slights the other. La BruyèreThe Characters or Manners of the Present Age. Ch. XII.