All members of the same community stand substantially upon the same level; with but insignificant exceptions; they have the same knowledge, the same skill, the same habits; the collective wealth of thought and its expression is not too great for each person to grasp and wield the whole of it.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.157-158

Every conceptual act is so immediately followed as to seem accompanied by a nomenclatory one. Or, an inkling of idea is won; it floats obscurely in the mind of the community until some one grasps it clearly enough to give it a name […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.139

He [child] can grasp and wield only the grosser elements of speech.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.13

It [mind] is […] always at work under the surface of speech, recasting and amending the classifications involved in words, acquiring new control of conceptions once faintly grasped and awkwardly wielded, crowding new knowledge into its old terms- all, on the whole, by and with the help of language, and yet in each individual item independently of language […]
- Whitney (1875), a pag.140

The child begins as a learner, and he continues such. There is continually in presence of his intellect more and better than he can grasp.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.13

The learner grasps the conception, at least in a measure, and then associates his own word with it by a purely external tie, having been able, if so guided, to form the same association with any other existing or possible word […].
- Whitney (1875), a pag.18