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Native Language Quotes

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.

Black Hawk, John B. Patterson (1836). “Life of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk: With an account of the late war”, p.97

As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore. Or if I would delight my private hours With music or with poem, where so soon As in our native language can I find That solace?

John Milton (1748). “The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton: Containing Paradise Lost, ... Paradise Regain'd, ... Samson Agonistes, ... And His Poems on Several Occasions. With a Tractate of Education. In Two Volumes”, p.58

No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.

Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs Corespondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson Late, President of the United States: Now First Published the Original Manuscripts”, p.347

I trade both with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our native language.

John Dryden (1988). “The Works of John Dryden, Volume V: Poems, 1697”, p.336, Univ of California Press