"Our words are not rough, unhewn stones, left at our door by a glacial moraine; they are blocks that have been brought to light by immense labour, that have been carved, measured and weighted again, before they became what we find them to be. Our poets make poems out of words, but every word, if carefully examined, will turn out to be itself a petrified poem, a reward of a deed done or a thought thought by those to whom we owe the whole of our intellectual inheritance, the capital on which we live, with which we speculate and strive to grow richer from day to day."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from GermanyPhilologistsHistorians from GermanyNon-fiction authors from GermanyTranslators from Germany
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Max Muller. —— (1888) Biographies of words and the home of the Aryas, London: Longmans, Green & Co.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_M%C3%BCller
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Max Müller
80 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Max Müller →
Related Quotes
"If I live for one purpose it is for this, that I will preach the union of Eastern and Western philosophy, the reconci…"
"Prof. Max Müller shows that no bribes or threats of Akbar could extort the original text of the Vedas from the Brâhma…"
"Would you say that any one sacred book is superior to all others in the world? ... I say the New Testament, after tha…"
"If history is to teach us anything, it must teach us that there is a continuity which binds together the present and …"
"These two sciences. the Science of Language and the Science of Man, cannot. at least for the present, be kept too muc…"
"We think we can see how it is that Professor Muller confesses that "now and then . . . one imagines one sees certain …"
"The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of, nay, much of the work which is theirs t…"
"It is useless to expect scientists to find in these works anything of interest except that which is in direct relatio…"
"Thus we may infer that the only characteristic difference between modern Christianity and the old heathen faiths is t…"
"One might think this position would have endeared Max Muller to missionaries, but in fact it did not. Rather, they fo…"