A Grammar of the Icelandic or Old Norse Tongue - Translated From the Swedish #246681

In no fact of our existence does this carelessness for the Past show itself more strongly than in our Language; we have mutilated, and in some respects wellnigh forgotten, the speech of our ancestors, and have got instead a monstrous mosaic, a patchwork of various tongues which we have picked up and pieced together as we went along.