Kato Lomb Quotes

#1. [B]ooks, which can be consulted at any time, questioned again and again, and read into scraps, cannot be rivaled as a language-learning tool.

Kato Lomb

#2. In classes, the more lively and uninhibited ones will "suck away the air" from those with a more passive nature, despite all the efforts of the teacher. It is also a special danger in large groups that you will hear your fellow students' bad pronunciation more than the teacher's perfected speech.

Kato Lomb

#3. Language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.

Kato Lomb

#4. There is as little likelihood of squeezing an adult into the intellectual framework of their childhood as there is into their first pair of pajamas.

Kato Lomb

#5. I feel such a difference between a philologist/linguist and a linguaphile as, say, a choreographer and a ballerina.

Kato Lomb

#6. To look it at another way, surely there are many unfortunate people who have needed to undergo multiple stomach surgeries. Yet no one would hand a scalpel over to them and ask them to perform the same surgery they received on another person, simply because they themselves had undergone it so often.

Kato Lomb

#7. Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people.

Kato Lomb

#8. The beauty of a language is, generally judged by its soft or rigid, melodious or harsh, ring. Other aspects, such as the flexibility of derivation, play hardly any role in grading. Were it the case, Russian would certainly be placed on the winner's stand. It would rank first in plasticity.

Kato Lomb

#9. [T]he time spent on language learning is lost unless it reaches a certain - daily and weekly - concentration.

Kato Lomb

#10. Language is present in a piece of work like the sea in a single drop.

Kato Lomb

#11. One should connect language learning with either work or leisure. And not at the expense of them but to supplement them.

Kato Lomb

#12. Language is present in a piece of writing like the sea in a single drop.

Kato Lomb

#13. He who knows other languages feels even closer to his own language.

Kato Lomb

#14. I mention the library only as a last resort. I recommend buying your own books... They can be spiced with underlines, question marks, and exclamation points; they can be thumbed and dog-eared, plucked to their essential core, and annotated so that they become a mirror of yourself.

Kato Lomb

#15. My motivation for learning Japanese was to translate a chemical patent, a job that I had heroically (i.e., rashly) taken on.

Kato Lomb

#16. [S]tudy has never been a burden for me but always an inexhaustible source of joy.

Kato Lomb

#17. When he is dissected after his death," a disrespectful interpreter said of a foreign dignitary, "a million predicates will be found in his stomach: those he swallowed in the past decades without saying them.

Kato Lomb

#18. Whenever I read statistical reports, I try to imagine my unfortunate contemporary, the Average Person, who, according to these reports, has 0.66 children, 0.032 cars, and 0.046 TVs.

Kato Lomb

#19. My view is that knowing languages is part of the process of becoming a cultured person.

Kato Lomb

#20. Knowledge - like a nail - is made load-bearing by being driven in. If it's not driven deep enough, it will break when any weight is put upon it.

Kato Lomb

#21. ... I never looked for or found national differences in the various places of the world, only common features - eternal human nature.

Kato Lomb

#22. The spread of languages shouldn't imply the decay of national languages. There are so many literary and historical memories, so many joys and sorrows of the past linked to them that it is an obligation for all of us to guard their present and future.

Kato Lomb

#23. Aside from mastery in the fine arts, success in learning anything is the result of genuine interest and amount of energy dedicated to it.

Kato Lomb

#24. At first, we should read with a blitheness practically bordering on superficiality; later on, with a conscientiousness close to distrust.

Kato Lomb

#25. A complicated structure? Undoubtedly. But after all, the cathedral of Milan is complicated too, and you still look at it with awe.

Kato Lomb

#26. [R]epetition is as an essential element of language learning as a knife is to a lathe or fuel is to an internal combustion engine.

Kato Lomb