Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.
Anthony BurgessRead
There is a satisfactory boniness about grammar which the flesh of sheer vocabulary requires before it can become a vertebrate and walk the earth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Grammar provides the necessary structure for vocabulary to function effectively in communication.
In this quote, Anthony Burgess illustrates the importance of grammar as a foundational framework for language. He compares grammar to a skeleton that gives shape and support to vocabulary, suggesting that without proper grammatical structure, words alone are insufficient to convey meaning and achieve clarity in communication.
Themes
GrammarVocabularyLanguageCommunicationStructure
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, during a discussion about the importance of sentence structure, this quote could be used to emphasize the role of grammar.
More from Anthony Burgess
All quotes βThere was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.
Anthony BurgessRead
Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.
Anthony BurgessRead
Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy.
Anthony BurgessRead
You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise Bog! I'm cured!
Anthony BurgessRead
It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321.
Anthony BurgessRead
Similar quotes
True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.
James Russell LowellRead
The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.
Harper LeeRead
What many students most want from college, although they would never admit it, is an authority structure. There is a demand for an authority which they can then reject; they want to be told what to do, so they can disobey. It is a textbook case of bad faith, a flight from freedom.
Mark FisherRead
Scoutcraft is a means through which the veriest hooligan can be brought to higher thought and to the elements of faith in God; and, coupled with the Scout's obligation to do a good turn every day, it gives the base of Duty to God and to Neighbour on which the parent or pastor can build with greater ease the form of belief that is desired.
Robert Baden-PowellRead
In a high tech world the cure for the tragic shortcomings and perilous fallacies of human intuition is education, but education in economics, evolutionary biology, probability and statistics - unfortunately most High School and College curricula have barely changed since Medieval times!
Steven PinkerRead
I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.
Rita DoveRead