commonplace book redux

ADDRESS TO THE VIENNA PRESS CLUB, NOVEMBER 21, 1897, DELIVERED IN GERMAN [Here in literal translation] […]

I am indeed the truest friend of the German language […]. I would only some changes effect. I would only the language method–the luxurious, elaborate construction compress, the eternal parenthesis suppress, do away with, annihilate; the introduction of more than thirteen subjects in one sentence forbid; the verb so far to the front pull that one it without a telescope discover can.

Mark Twain, The Awful German Language, in A Tramp Abroad, 1880