Michel Bréal

"The so-called pejorative tendency has yet another cause. It is in the nature of human malice to take pleasure in looking for a vice or a fault behind a quality. The French have the adjective prude, wh…"

"We must realize the extent to which it is necessary that our knowledge of language be based on history. Only history can impart to words that degree of precision which we need in order to understand t…"

"There is another kind of studies which distinguished from the sometimes opposed to comparative grammar. It is known under the name of general or philosophical grammar , whose principles and observatio…"

"There is a constant succession of books on the subject of comparative grammar, for the use both of students and of the general public; yet it does not seem that we are offered what we really need. Lan…"

"Sometimes is a synonym which extends itself, and contrasts by just much the domain of its colleague. At other times it is an historical event which comes to modify and renew the vocabulary."

"We define law, using the word in the philosophic sense, as the constant relation discoverable in a series of phenomena."

"In that second part we propose to investigate how it happens that words, once created and endowed with a certain meaning, extend that meaning or contract it, transfer it from one group of notions on t…"

"My intention was to give a general outline, to sketch a general division and, as it were, a provisional plan of a domain that has not been studied so far and which should be the result of work for man…"