Communication

Semaphore, Port Arthur

Evil communications corrupt good manners.
— Holy Bible, 1 Corinthians, 15:33.

Every translator ought to regard himself as a broker in the great intellectual traffic of the world, and to consider it his business to promote the barter of the produce of the mind. For, whatever people may say of the inadequacy of translation, it is, and must ever be, one of the most important and meritorious occupations in the great commerce of the human race.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832), Kunst und Altertum.

Our learned men have shown little desire to protect the German tongue, some because they really thought that wisdom could only be clothed in Latin and Greek; others because they feared the world would discover their ignorance, at present hidden under a mask of big words. Really learned people need not fear this, for the more their wisdom and science come among people, the more witnesses of their excellence they will have… A well-developed vernacular, like highly-polished glass, enhances the acuteness of the mind and gives the intellect transparent clearness.
— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 – 1716), Quoted by Boorstin, The Discoverers, 414.

[The Royal Society’s preferred style] They have therefore been most rigorous in putting in execution the only remedy that can be found for this extravagance, i.e. this vicious abundance of phrase, the stricken metaphors, this volubility of tongue, which makes so great a noise in the world; and that has been, a constant resolution, to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style; to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men delivered so many things, almost in an equal number of words.
— Thomas Sprat (1635 – 1713), History of the Royal Society, 1667, in Jeffares and Davies, The Scientific Background, 1958, 22.

The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure. Readers accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will perhaps frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness: they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to enquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title …

The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere was professedly written in imitation of the style, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets; but with a few exceptions, the Author believes that the language adopted in it has been equally intelligible for these three last centuries.
— William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772 – 1834), Lyrical Ballads, 1798, Advertisement.

The man who first took advantage of the general curiosity that was excited by a siege or battle, to betray the readers of news into the knowledge of the shop where the best puffs and power were to be sold, was undoubtedly a man of great sagacity, and profound skill in the nature of man… . Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetic.
— Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784), The Idler, No. 40, 20 January 1759.

Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of ‘The Natural History of Iceland’ from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: — ‘CHAP. LXXII. Concerning snakes. There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.’
— James Boswell (1740 – 1795), Life of Johnson.

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
— Anonymous, Cornish prayer.

Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode off madly in all directions.
— Stephen Leacock (1869-1944), ‘Gertrude the Governess’ in Nonsense Novels.

He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.
— Apocrypha: Ecclesiasticus, 13, 1.

Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who present, past and future sees.
— William Blake (1757 – 1827), Songs of Experience.

… for though no reason may seem to favour them more than the contrary Opinion, yet sense can very hardly allow them; and to satisfie Mankind, both these must concur.
— Sir William Temple, Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning, 1690, discussing the Copernican system and Harvey’s circulation of the blood, quoted by Robert Merton, On the Shoulders of Giants, 1965, 159.

Merton, Robert K., On the Shoulders of Grants: A Shandean Postscript, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1965.
— Max Charlesworth, Lyndsay Farrall, Terry Stokes, David Turnbull, Life Among the Scientists, Oxford University Press, 1989, meaning to cite Merton’s On the Shoulders of Giants in their bibliography, 295. Oops!

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