Cicero
"O tempora, o mores! Senatus haec intellegit, consul videt; hic tamen vivit, vivit?"
-M. Tullius Cicero, Oratio qua L. Catilinam emisit in Senatu habita, 1.2. [1]
Homer
"Rage - Sing, goddess the rage of Peleus' son Achilles
Murderous, doomed, who cost the Achaeans countless losses,
Hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls
Great fighters' souls, and made their bodies carrion,
Feasts for the dogs and birds."
-Homer, The Iliad (Translation by Robert Fagles) [2]
Livy
"Tum Romanus sinu ex toga facto, 'Hic,' inquit, 'vobis bellum et pacem portamus; utrum pacet sumite.' Sub hanc vocem haud minus ferociter, daret utrum vellet, succlamatum est; et cum is iterum sinu effuso bellum dare dixisset, accipere se omnes responderunt et quibus acciperent animis iisdem se gesturos."
"Fabius, in answer, laid his hand on the fold of his toga, where he had gathered it at the breast, and 'Here,' he said, 'we bring you peace and war. Take which you will.' Scarcely had he spoken, when the answer no less proudly rang out: 'Whichever you please - we do not care.' Fabius let the gathered folds fall, and cried: 'We give you war.' The Carthaginian senators replied, as one man: 'We accept it; and in the same spirit we will fight it to the end.'"
-Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, Liber XXI.XVIII (Livy, A History of Rome, Book 21.18 - English Translation by Aubrey de Selincourt) [3]
Modern
"Paging through the dictionary is like looking through a microscope. Every word breaks down into parts with unique properties - prefix, suffix, root. Eliza gleans not only the natural laws that govern the letters but their individual behaviors. R, M, and D are strong, unbending, and faithful. The sometimes silent B and G and the slippery K follow strident codes of conduct. Even the redoubtable H, which can make P sound like F and turn ROOM into RHEUM, obeys etymology. Consonants are the camels of language, proudly carrying their lingual loads.
"Vowels, however, are a different species, the fish that flash and glisten in the watery depths. Vowels are elastic and inconstant, fickle, and unfaithful. E can sound like I or U. -IBLE and -ABLE are impossible to discern. There is no combination the vowels haven't tried, exhaustive and incestuous in their couplings. E will just as soon pair with A, I, or O, leading the dance or being led. Eliza prefers the vowels' unpredictability and, of all vowels, favors Y. Y defies categorization, the only letter that can be two things at once. Before the bee, Eliza had been a consonant, slow and unsurprising. With her bee success, she has entered vowelhood. Eliza beings to look at life in alphabetical terms. School is consonantal in its unchanging schedule. God, full of possibility, is a vowel. Death: the ultimate consonant."
- Myla Goldberg, Bee Season [4]
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