[…] our moods, those means of defining the contemplated relation between subject and predicate, or modifications of the copula. There are infinite shades of doubt and contingency, of hope and fear, of supplication and exaction, in our mental acts and cognitions, which all the synthetic resources of Greek moods, with added particles and adverbs, which all the analytic phraseology of English, are but rude and coarse means of signifying.
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 220