dissolve an image into a concept.

but we do know of countless individualized and consequently unequal actions which we equate by omitting the aspects in which they are unequal and which we now designate as "honest" actions.

and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things--metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities

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And besides, what about these linguistic conventions themselves? Are they perhaps products of knowledge, that is, of the sense of truth? Are designations congruent with things? I

The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages

There are two universal, general gifts be-stowed by nature upon man, Reason and Speech; dialectic is the theory of the former, grammar and rhetoric of the latte

as infants cannot learn to speak except by learning words and phrases from those who do speak

the rules which are laid down in the art of oratory could not have been observed, and noted, and reduced to system, if they had not first had their birth in the genius of orators

Language is based on reason, antiquity, authority, custom. It is analogy, and sometimes etymology, that affords the chief support to reason. A certain majesty, and, if I may so express myself, religion, graces the antique.

Foreign words, like men, and like many of our institutions, have come to us, I might almost say, from all nations.

uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences

The foundation of good style is correctness of language, which falls under five heads. (1) First, the proper use of connecting words, and the arrangement of them in the natural sequence which some of them require. For instance, the connective "men" (e.g. ego men) requires the correlative "de" (e.g. o de). The answering word must be brought in before the first has been forgotten, and not be widely separated from it; nor, except in the few cases where this is appropriate, is another connective to be introduced before the one required. Consider the sentence, "But as soon as he told me (for Cleon had come begging and praying), took them along and set out." In this sentence many connecting words are inserted in front of the one required to complete the sense; and if there is a long interval before "set out," the result is obscurity. One merit, then, of good style lies in the right use of connecting words. (2) The second lies in calling things by their own special names and not by vague general ones. (3) The third is to avoid ambiguities; unless, indeed, you definitely desire to be ambiguous, as those do who have nothing to say but are pretending to mean something.

People do not feel towards strangers as they do towards their own countrymen, and the same thing is true of their feeling for language. It is therefore well to give to everyday speech an unfamiliar air: people like what strikes them, and are struck by what is out of the way.

The power of discourse stands in the same relation to the soul's organization as the pharmacopoeia does to the physiology of bodies.