Quotation
Quote by Heinrich Heine
The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin.
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The quote jokes that the Romans could conquer so much because Latin was already their language. If they had first needed to study it as outsiders, learning it would have taken time and delayed their conquests. The humor comes from imagining Romans as students of a language they naturally spoke.
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- Project Gutenberg, The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine, translated by Havelock Ellis
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- Official Statement
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