Sometimes you jus’ gotta bust out da Latin. (Ed. Note: That was not Latin.)
True, lawyers, members of the clergy, academics and stuffy, uptight writers (cough, cough…barf) still drop Latin words and phrases from time to time, but Latin is officially a dead language, and has not been used as any people’s native language for over a thousand years. In Canada, my parents marked the last generation required to learn Latin in school.
Although some ascribe the Quote of the Day to Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), probably best known for writing the Summa Theologica, something tells me he wasn’t the first person to utter these words. Nonetheless, the first time I came across them in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, they had a visceral effect on me. Dead language or not, these words have reverberated through history with hallowed truth.
“Amor est magis cognitivus quam cognitio.” (We know things better through love than through knowledge.)
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Richard H. Harris 