@ Svipdag

[Loki]

You have an impressive array of individual, fitting quotes under every one of your posts - amazing!

Have you made a huge collection of these or ... I'm truly fascinated. :eek:

[Graham]

I like his way of structuring sentences. Maybe it's an older thing.

[Svipdag]

I do remember a large number of quotations, but I do not trust my memory any more. More often than not, I have forgotten the author of the quotation. So, I look them up, either in "The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar
Phrases" by Burton Stevenson or in "Veni, Vidi, Vici" by Eugene Ehrlich, to be sure that I remember it correctly and attribute it to the right author.

While doing this, I often run across other appropriate quotations which I write down on any convenient slip of paper. Thus, my collection grows , much like the way that Dr. Murray accumulated words and definitions for the original Oxford English Dictionary.

I have never ceased to be amazed at how much the Romans had to say on topics which have remained timely. I wish that I could read Greek (and had a Greek font on this computer). Alas, it is not one of the 8 languages which I can read at least fairly well.

In college, I found that the Greek course was intended exclusively for majors.
It was scheduled at 8:00 AM six days a week, so that no non-major could fit it into his schedule. Everyone knows, of course, that "The Greeks had a word for it."

Though of Norwegian ancestry, I rarely use Norwegian quotations because, the Norwegian which I learned from my grandmother and great-aunts was a rustic 19th century dialect called "bondespraak" (farm talk). I don't know what the equivalents would be in "bokmaal" , the literary language (mostly Danish) or "Riksmaal", the court language. So, I would sound like an untutored rustic if I used the quotations as I learned them.

My literary style is a bit old-fashioned because Ernest Hemingway turned a whole generation of authors against using elegant prose. In most prose these days, there's really no such thing as style any more. I miss it. Tolkien had it, so did Doyle, Dunsany, and Shaw, inter alia.


"GRAECIA CAPTA FERVM VICTOREM CEPIT" - QVINTVS HORATIVS FLACCVS

[Útrám]

I've always been impressed with Svipdag's choice of quotes and just his posts in general. Kudos to Svipdag :)

[Frigga]

Svipdag is just a really classy man, and it's a joy to read his posts. I am glad that he chooses to be online, not many of his generation do so. :)

[rhiannon]

I have total respect and admiration for Svipdag. He has seen and lived through things the rest of us could never imagine. I totally admire his tech-savvy, which likely sets him apart from many in his generation.

I think the West needs to revamp its treatment of senior citizens. They deserve so much more honor than they are given :(

[Osprey]

At first i thought that he created each quotation by himself, just to illustrate a point clearly.

[Svipdag]

At first i thought that he created each quotation by himself, just to illustrate a point clearly.

Well, there ARE quotations by me, but they're in English. I've been pontificating and spouting aphorisms since I was about 11 years old. Some of them, I've seen fit to retain.


"TIBI GRATIAS AGO"

[Svipdag]

It's wonderful to be appreciated, especially since I often feel that nobody is reading my posts. Clearly, some of you do, and I am very glad. Thank you so much for telling me so.

[Leliana]

I read most of your posts and I like most of your views, I respect you for your great knowledge, age and wisdom! However, I think that your Latin quotes would do more sense if you'd write them in English or an other 'living' language. I had lessons in Latin back in boarding school but I forgot most. I'm sorry but to copy your quotes and to paste them in a translator is too much of a nuisance.

Wise quotes don't lose a bit of their truth if translated in another language. :shy: I don't think that something has to be written in Latin to be or sound more sophisticated. But there are certainly people out there who think that the Latin language is a basic prerequisite to heighten the worth of a quotation, like it were a gilding. Please let me say in a shy tone in with all respect that I'm not one of them.

[Loki]

I read most of your posts and I like most of your views, I respect you for your great knowledge, age and wisdom! However, I think that your Latin quotes would do more sense if you'd write them in English or an other 'living' language. I had lessons in Latin back in boarding school but I forgot most. I'm sorry but to copy your quotes and to paste them in a translator is too much of a nuisance.

Wise quotes don't lose a bit of their truth if translated in another language. :shy: I don't think that something has to be written in Latin to be or sound more sophisticated. But there are certainly people out there who think that the Latin language is a basic prerequisite to heighten the worth of a quotation, like it were a gilding. Please let me say in a shy tone in with all respect that I'm not one of them.

No, I think it's great in Latin! It should inspire some of us younger generation to go look it up.

[Albion]

I see no Albion appreciation thread yet. :( My straight talking, common sense approach to all the world's problems doesn't find me fame without Latin quotes.

[Svipdag]

All of my quotations are in the original language, whatever it may be: Latin, French, German, Italian, Greek, Norwegian, or English. The reason for this lies in another quotation, this one Italian. "Traduttore traditore" "[The]
translator [is a] traitor." There is, IMO, no such thing as a faithful translation, whether into English or into any other language.

I must apologise for the fact that, on the very rare occasions when I use Greek or Sanskrit quotations, I must, perforce, transliterate them into Roman type because I do not have Greek or Devanagari fonts, nor, if I did, would my software let me use them in a post in a forum.

Even in Norwegian quotations, there are characters which I can't use here, so I use the Danish spelling, for example, in which aa is used for a character which is pronounced "aw".

A literal translation sometimes doesn't even make sense in English. I used the Norwegian folk saying "Vaer' ikke en skohvisk" recently. Literally, it means "Don't be a shoe-whisk." and means about the same as "La' de ikke koke suppe paa deg." = "Don't let them cook soup on you."
"Traduttore traditore"

[Svipdag]

I have total respect and admiration for Svipdag. He has seen and lived through things the rest of us could never imagine. I totally admire his tech-savvy, which likely sets him apart from many in his generation.

I think the West needs to revamp its treatment of senior citizens. They deserve so much more honor than they are given :(

I agree with you about the treatment of senior citizens, but there is also truth in what Finley Peter Dunne said over 100 years ago through his fictional Irish bartender, Martin Dooley:

"Many a man who couldn't tell ye the way to the corner drugstore at thirty-five will receive a more respectful audience when age has further impaired his mind."


"Ve get too soon oldt und too late schmardt." - Amish proverb