Daniel Garrison Brinton > Quotes

“All the earth is a grave, and nought escapes it; nothing is so perfect that it does not fall and disappear. The rivers, brooks, fountains and waters flow on, and never return to their joyous beginnings; they hasten on to the vast realms of Tlaloc, and the wider they spread between their marges the more rapidly do they mould their own sepulchral urns. That which was yesterday is not to-day; and let not that which is to-day trust to live to-morrow.”
― Daniel G. Brinton, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry, Containing the Nahuatl Text of XXVII Ancient Mexican Poems : Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII.

“to look upon each language as an organism, all its parts bearing harmonious relations to each other, and standing in a definite connection with the intellectual and emotional development of the nation speaking it.”
― Daniel Garrison Brinton, The Philosophic Grammar of American Languages, as Set Forth by Wilhelm von Humboldt With the Translation of an Unpublished Memoir by Him on the American Verb