Every living language, like the perspiring bodies of living creatures, is in perpetual motion and alteration; some words go off, a...nd become obsolete; others are taken in, and by degrees grow into common use; or the same word is inverted to a new sense or notion, which in tract of time makes an observable change in the air and features of a language, as age makes in the lines and mien of a face.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every ceremony or rite has a value if it is performed without alteration. A ceremony is a book in which a great deal is written. A...nyone who understands can read it. One rite often contains more than a hundred books.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Absence, hear my protestation Against thy strength... Distance and length, Do what thou canst for alteration: For hearts of truest metal Absence doth join, and Time doth settle.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So he with difficulty and labour hard Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;... But he once passed, soon after when man fell, Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain Following his track, such was the will of Heaven, Paved after him a broad and beaten way Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length From hell continued reaching th' utmost orb Of this frail world;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love... Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My wife, my wife! what wife? I have no wife. O insupportable! O heavy hour!... Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse Of sun and moon, and that th' affrighted globe Should yawn at alteration.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »