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Languages do not spring up like plants, some weak and sickly, others healthy and robust. All their virtue lies in the will and determination of morta… - Joachim du Bellay
" "Languages do not spring up like plants, some weak and sickly, others healthy and robust. All their virtue lies in the will and determination of mortals. To condemn a language as being struck with impotence is to adopt a tone of arrogance and temerity; as certain of our fellow-countrymen do to-day, who, being nothing less than Greeks or Latins, regard with a more than stoical superciliousness everything written in French. If our language is poorer than the Greek or Latin, this is not attributable to our own inability, but to the ignorance of our own predecessors who have bequeathed it to us in so meagre and so bare a form that it stands in need of ornament, and, so to speak, of plumage from other sources.
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About Joachim du Bellay
(c. 1522 – 1 January 1560) was a French poet, literary critic, and a founder of . He notably wrote the manifesto of the group: Défense et illustration de la langue française, which aimed at promoting French as an artistic language, equal to Greek and Latin.
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Du Bellay
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Joachim Du Bellay
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Additional quotes by Joachim du Bellay
The Romans well knew how to enrich their language without applying themselves to the labour of translation. They imitated the best Greek authors, transforming themselves into them, devouring them, and after having well digested them, converting them into blood and tissue. In like manner we must imitate the Greeks and Latins.
Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage,
Ou comme cestui là qui conquit la toison,
Et puis est retourné, plein d’usage et raison,
Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âge!Quand reverrai-je, hélas, de mon petit village
Fumer la cheminée, et en quelle saison
Reverrai-je le clos de ma pauvre maison,
Qui m'est une province, et beaucoup davantage?
Happy who, like Ulysses or that lord Who raped the fleece, returning full and sage,
With usage and the world's wide reason stored, With his own kin can wait the end of age.
When shall I see, when shall I see, God knows! My little village smoke; or pass the door,
The old, dear door of that unhappy house That is to me a kingdom and much more?
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