Everything in language goes by analogy; what a language is in the habit of doing, it can do, but nothing else; and habits are of very slow growth; a lost habit cannot be revived; a new one cannot be formed except gradually, and almost or quite unconsciously.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.150

The mental action of the individual is schooled into certain habits, consonant with those of his community; he acquires the current classifications and abstractions and ways of looking at things.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.19

The powerful reflex influence of language on mental action is a universally admitted fact in linguistics; to allow it is only to allow that rooted habits, learned by each generation from its predecessor, have a controlling influence on action- which is axiomatic.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.225