Richard Chenevix Trench

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved.

I travel back to Shakespeare, to Spenser, to Gascoigne, to Hawes, to Chaucer, Wiclif, and at length to Piers Ploughman, Robert of Gloucester, or whatever other work is taken as the earliest in our tongue. It is quite impossible with any consistency to make a stand anywhere, or to admit any words now obsolete without including, or at least attempting to include all.

A good ship is never tested in calm waters.