Grammarian Quotes & Sayings

Somebody might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of his grammarian. But nobody did come, because nobody does; and under the crushing recognition of his gigantic error Jude continued to wish himself out of the world. — Thomas Hardy

For example, there is an old grammarian's saw about how a sentence can end in five prepositions. Daddy trudges upstairs to Junior's bedroom to read him a bedtime story. Junior spots the book, scowls, and asks, Daddy, what did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to out of up for? — Steven Pinker

The best grammarian still can't write a verse. — Dagobert D. Runes

Remember this: one can be a strict logician or grammarian and at the same time full of imagination and music. — Hermann Hesse

Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of philosophers set chatting together, said to them, "Either I am much deceived,
or by your cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no very deep discourse." To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied: " 'Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of the verb Ballo be spelt with a
double L, or that hunt after the derivation of the comparatives Cheirou and Beltiou, and the superlatives Cheiriotou and Beliotou, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science; but as to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up those that entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad. — Michel De Montaigne

I despise the proper constructions and cases, because I think it very unfitting that the words of the celestial oracle should be restricted by the rules of Donatus [a well-known grammarian]. — Pope Gregory I

[After being corrected by a grammarian for using the feminine pronoun instead of the pseudogeneric masculine:] As you please, but for my part, if I were to express myself so, I should fancy I had a beard. — Marie De Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise De Sevigne

I am not a grammarian. Maybe my style is eccentric. — Dorothy Kilgallen

Just as the grammarian makes one study grammar,
A Buddha teaches according to the tolerance of his students;
Some he urges to refrain from sins, others to do good,
Some to rely on dualism, other on non-dualism;
And to some he teaches the profound,
The terrifying, the practice of enlightenment,
Whose essence is emptiness that is compassion — Akkineni Nagarjuna

Among others, yes. There were some Egyptian gods worshipped there too." Lourds grinned. "One of the most interesting pieces is the Stoivadeion, the temple dedicated to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. It's a giant phallus." The two soldiers in the front of the boat totally lost it and started laughing hysterically. Even Fitrat laughed, and he wiped his eyes. "Who would do such a thing?" "It was erected - if I may be so bold - " The soldiers howled with glee. " - by an ancient Greek grammarian named Carystius. Sadly, this phallus is practically all that remains of his works. Even that is broken." "Broken?" The young soldier in the front seat turned around again. He had changed to speaking English. "Yes. In half." "So now it's half-cocked? Is that how you say this in your slang?" The soldier laughed and pounded his thigh with a fist. "Yes." Lourds covered his face with his hat and wanted to throw himself overboard. — Charles Brokaw

A big heavy phrase is easier to handle if it comes at the end, when your work assembling the overarching phrase is done and nothing else is on you mind. (It's another version of the advice to prefer right-branching trees over left-branching and center-embedded ones.) Light-before-heavy is one of the oldest principles in linguistics, having been discovered in the fourth century BCE by the Sanskrit grammarian Panini. It often guides the intuitions of writers when they have to choose an order for items in a list, as in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle; and Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! — Steven Pinker

Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

For the fact is that
neither the grammarian nor any other person of skill ever makes a mistake
in so far as he is what his name implies; they none of them err unless
their skill fails them, and then they cease to be skilled artists. No
artist or sage or ruler errs at the time when he is what his name implies;
though he is commonly said to err. — Plato